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A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 



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Books by 
THEODORE DREISER 



SISTER CARRIE 

JENNIE GERHARDT 

THE FINANCIER 

THE TITAN 

THE GENIUS 

A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

A HOOSIER HOLIDAY 

PLAYS OF THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 

THE HAND OF THE POTTER 

FREE AND OTHER STORIES 

TWELVE MEN 

HEY RUB-A-DUB-DUB 

A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 



A BOOK ABOUT 
MYSELF 



THEODORE DREISER 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 






Copyright, 1922, by 
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, Inc. 



All rights reserved 



First edition. .. .November, 1922 
Second " December, IQ22 



Printed in the United States of America 

0E)H8'22 

(Qh A 69 24 32 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/bookaboutmyself01drei 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 



CHAPTER I 

During the year 1890 I had been formulating my first dim 
notion as to what it was I wanted to do in life. For two 
years and more I had been reading Eugene Field's "Sharps 
and Flats," a column he wrote daily for the Chicago Daily 
News, and through this, the various phases of life which 
he suggested in a humorous though at times romantic way, 
I was beginning to suspect, vaguely at first, that I wanted 
to write, possibly something like that. Nothing else that 
I had so far read — novels, plays, poems, histories — gave me 
quite the same feeling for constructive thought as did the 
matter of his daily notes, poems, and aphorisms, which were 
of Chicago principally, whereas nearly all others dealt with 
foreign scenes and people. 

But this comment on local life here and now, these tren- 
chant bits on local street scenes, institutions, characters, func- 
tions, all moved me as nothing hitherto had. To me Chicago 
at this time seethed with a peculiarly human or realistic atmos- 
phere. It is given to some cities, as to some lands, to suggest 
romance, and to me Chicago did that hourly. It sang, I 
thought, and in spite of what I deemed my various troubles 
— small enough as I now see them — I was singing with it. 
These seemingly drear neighborhoods through which I walked 
each day, doing collecting for an easy-payment furniture 
company, these ponderous regions of large homes where new- 
wealthy packers and manufacturers dwelt, these curiously 
foreign neighborhoods of almost all nationalities; and, lastly, 
that great downtown area, surrounded on two sides by the 
river, on the east by the lake, and on the south by railroad 
yards and stations, the whole set with these new tall build- 
ings, the wonder of the western world, fascinated me. Chi- 

1 



:,' 



2 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

cago was so young, so blithe, so new, I thought. Florence 
in its best days must have been something like this to young 
Florentines, or Venice to the young Venetians. 

Here was a city which had no traditions but was making 
them, and this was the very thing that every one seemed to 
understand and rejoice in. Chicago was like no other city 
in the world, so said they all. Chicago would outstrip every 
other American city, New York included, and become the 
first of all American, if not European or world, cities. . . . This 
dream many hundreds of thousands of its citizens held dear. 
Chicago would be first in wealth, first in beauty, first in art 
achievement. A great World's Fair was even then being 
planned that would bring people from all over the world. 
The Auditorium, the new Great Northern Hotel, the amazing 
(for its day) Masonic Temple twenty-two stories high, a score 
of public institutions, depots, theaters and the like, were being 
constructed. It is something wonderful to witness a world 
metropolis springing up under one's very eyes, and this is 
what was happening here before me. 

Nosing about the city in an inquiring way and dreaming 
half-formed dreams of one and another thing I would like 
to do, it finally came to me, dimly, like a bean that strains 
at its enveloping shell, that I would like to write of these 
things. It would be interesting, so I thought, to describe 
a place like Goose Island in the Chicago River, a mucky and 
neglected realm then covered with shanties made of upturned 
boats sawed in two, and yet which seemed to me the height 
of the picturesque; also a building like the Auditorium or 
the Masonic Temple, that vast wall of masonry twenty-two 
stories high and at that time actually the largest building 
in the world; or a seething pit like that of the Board of 
Trade, which I had once visited and which astonished and 
fascinated me as much as anything ever had. That roaring, 
yelling, screaming whirlpool of life! And then the lake, 
with its pure white sails and its blue water; the Chicago 
River, with its black, oily water, its tall grain elevators and 
black coal pockets; the great railroad yards, covering miles 
and miles of space with their cars. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 3 

How wonderful it all was ! As I walked from place to place 
collecting I began betimes to improvise rhythmic, vaguely 
formulated word-pictures or rhapsodies anent these same 
and many other things — free verse, I suppose we should call 
it now — which concerned everything and nothing but some- 
how expressed the seething poetry of my soul and this thing 
to me. Indeed I was crazy with life, a little demented or 
frenzied with romance and hope. I wanted to sing, to 
dance, to eat, to love. My word-dreams and maunderings 
concerned my day, my age, poverty, hope, beauty, which I 
mouthed to myself, chanting aloud at times. Sometimes, be- 
cause on a number of occasions I had heard the Reverend 
Frank "W. Gunsaulus and his like spout rocket-like sputter- 
ings on the subjects of life and religion, I would orate, plead- 
ing great causes as I went. I imagined myself a great orator 
with thousands of people before me, my gestures and enun- 
ciation and thought perfect, poetic, and all my hearers moved 
to tears or demonstrations of wild delight. 

After a time I ventured to commit some of these things 
to paper, scarcely knowing what they were, and in a fever 
for self -advancement I bundled them up and sent them tp 
Eugene Field. In his column and elsewhere I had read 
about geniuses being occasionally discovered by some chance 
composition or work noted by one in authority. I waited for 
a time, with great interest but no vast depression, to see 
what my fate would be. But no word came and in time I 
realized that they must have been very bad and had ( been 
dropped into the nearest waste basket. But this did not 
give me pause nor grieve me. I seethed to express my- 
self. I bubbled. I dreamed. And I had a singing feeling, 
now that I had done this much, that some day I should really 
write and be very famous into the bargain. 

But how ? How ? My feeling was that I ought to get into 
newspaper work, and yet this feeling was so nebulous that I 
thought it would never come to pass. I saw mention in the 
papers of reporters calling to find out this, or being sent 
to do that, and so the idea of becoming a reporter gradually 
formulated itself in my mind, though how I was to get such 



4 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

a place I had not the slightest idea. Perhaps reporters had 
to have a special training of some kind; maybe they had to 
begin as clerks behind a counter, and this made me very 
somber, for those glowing business offices always seemed so 
far removed from anything to which I could aspire. Most of 
them were ornate, fioreate, with onyx or chalcedony wall trim- 
mings, flambeaux of bronze or copper on the walls, imita- 
tion mother-of-pearl lights in the ceilings — in short, all the 
gorgeousness of a sultan's court brought to the outer counter 
where people subscribed or paid for ads. Because the news- 
papers were always dealing with signs and wonders, great 
functions, great commercial schemes, great tragedies and pleas- 
ures, I began to conceive of them as wonderlands in which 
all concerned were prosperous and happy. I painted re- 
. porters and newspaper men generally as receiving fabulous 
salaries, being sent on the most urgent and interesting mis- 
sions. I think I confused, inextricably, reporters with am- 
bassadors and prominent men generally. Their lives were laid 
among great people, the rich, the famous, the powerful; and 
because of their position and facility of expression and mental 
force they were received everywhere as equals. Think of me, 
new, young, poor, being received in that way! 

Imagine then my intense delight one day, when, scanning 
the ' ' Help Wanted : Male ' ' columns of the Chicago Herald, 
I encountered an advertisement which ran (in substance) : 

Wanted: A number of bright young men to assist in the business 
department during the Christmas holidays. Promotion possible. Ap- 
ply to Business Manager between 9 and 10 a. m. 

"Here," I thought as I read it, "is just the thing I am 
looking for. Here is this great paper, one of the most pros- 
perous in Chicago, and here is an opening for me. If I can 
only get this my fortune is made. I shall rise rapidly." I 
conceived of myself as being sent off the same day, as it were, 
on some brilliant mission and returning, somehow, covered 
with glory. 

I hurried to the office of the Herald, in Washington Street 
near Fifth Avenue, this same morning, and asked to see 
the business manager. After a short wait I was permitted 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 5 

to enter the sanctuary of this great person, who to me, be- 
cause of the material splendor of the front office, seemed 
to be the equal of a millionaire at least. He was tall, grace- 
ful, dark, his full black whiskers parted aristocratically in 
the middle of his chin, his eyes vague pools of subtlety. ' ' See 
what a wonderful thing it is to be connected with the news- 
paper business!" I told myself. 

"I saw your ad in this morning's paper," I said hope- 
fully. 

"Yes, I did want a half dozen young men," he replied, 
beaming upon me reassuringly, "but I think I have nearly 
enough. Most of the young men that come here seem to 
think they are to be connected with the Herald direct, but 
the fact is we want them only for clerks in our free Christmas 
gift bureau. They have to judge whether or not the appli- 
cants are impostors and keep people from imposing on the 
paper. The work will only be for a week or ten days, but 

you will probably earn ten or twelve dollars in that time " 

My heart sank. "After the first of the year, if you take it, 
you may come around to see me. I may have something 
for you." 

When he spoke of the free Christmas gift bureau I vaguely 
understood what he meant. For weeks past, the Herald had 
been conducting a campaign for gifts for the poorest children 
of the city. It had been importuning the rich and the moder- 
ately comfortable to give, through the medium of its scheme, 
which was a bureau for the free distribution of all such 
things as could be gathered via cash or direct donation of 
supplies: toys, clothing, even food, for children. 

"But I wanted to become a reporter if I could," I sug- 
gested. 

"Well," he said, with a wave of his hand, "this is as good 
a way as any other. When this is over I may be able to 
introduce you to our city editor." The title, "city editor," 
mystified and intrigued me. It sounded so big and significant. 

This offer was far from what I anticipated, but I took it 
joyfully. Thus to step from one job to another, however 
brief, and one with such prospects, seemed the greatest luck 



6 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

in the world. For by now I was nearly hypochondriacal on 
the subjects of poverty, loneliness, the want of the creature 
comforts and pleasures of life. The mere thought of having 
enough to eat and to wear and to do had something of paradise 
about it. Some previous long and fruitless searches for work 
had marked me with a horror of being without it. 

I bustled about to the Herald's Christmas Annex, as it was 
called, a building standing in Fifth Avenue between Madi- 
son and Monroe, and reported to a brisk underling in charge 
of the doling out of these pittances to the poor. Without a 
word he put me behind the single long counter which ran 
across the front of the room and over which were handled 
all those toys and Christmas pleasure pieces which a loud 
tomtoming concerning the dire need of the poor and the 
proper Christmas spirit had produced. 

Life certainly offers some amusing paradoxes at times, and 
that with that gay insouciance which life alone can muster 
and achieve when it is at its worst anachronistically. Here 
was I, a victim of what Socialists would look upon as wage 
slavery and economic robbery, quite as worthy, I am sure, 
of gifts as any other, and yet lined up with fifteen or twenty 
other economic victims, ragamuffin souls like myself, all out 
of jobs, many of them out at elbows, and all of them doling 
out gifts from eight-thirty in the morning until eleven and 
twelve at night to people no worse off than themselves. 

I wish you might have seen this chamber as I saw it for 
eight or nine days just preceding and including Christmas 
day itself. (Yes ; we worked from eight a. m. to five-thirty 
p. m. on Christmas day, and very glad to get the money, 
thank you.) There poured in here from the day the bureau 
opened, which was the morning I called, and until it closed 
Christmas night, as diverse an assortment of alleged poverty- 
stricken souls as one would want to see. I do not say that 
many of them were not deserving; I am willing to believe 
that most of them were ; but, deserving or no, they were still 
worthy of all they received here. Indeed when I think of 
the many who came miles, carrying slips of paper on which 
had been listed, as per the advice of this paper, all they 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 7 

wished Santa Clans to bring them or their children, and then 
recall that, for all their pains in having their minister or 
doctor or the Herald itself vise their request, they received 
only a fraction of what they sought, I am inclined to think 
that all were even more deserving than their reward indicated. 

For the whole scheme, as I soon found in talking with others 
and seeing for myself how it worked, was most loosely man- 
aged. Endless varieties of toys and comforts had been talked 
about in the paper, but only a few of the things promised, 
or vaguely indicated, were here to give — for the very good 
reason that no one would give them for nothing to the Herald. 
Nor had any sensible plan been devised for checking up either 
the gifts given or the persons who had received them, and 
so the same person, as some of these recipients soon discov- 
ered, could come over and over, bearing different lists of 
toys, and get them, or at least a part of them, until some 
clerk with a better eye for faces than another would chance 
to recognize the offender and point him or her out. Jews, 
the fox-like Slavic type of course, and the poor Irish, were 
the worst offenders in this respect. The Herald was supposed 
to have kept all applications written by children to Santa 
Claus, but it had not done so, and so hundreds claimed that 
they had written letters and received no answer. At the end 
of the second or third day before Christmas it was found nec- 
essary, because of the confusion and uncertainty, to throw 
the doors wide open and give to all and sundry who looked 
worthy of whatever was left or "handy," we, the ragamuffin 
clerks, being the judges. 

And now the clerks themselves, seeing that no records 
were kept and how without plan the whole thing was, notified 
poor relatives and friends, and these descended upon us with 
baskets, expecting candy, turkeys, suits of clothing and the 
like, but receiving instead only toy wagons, toy stoves, baby 
brooms, Noah's Arks, story books — the shabbiest mess of cheap 
things one could imagine. For the newspaper, true to that 
canon of commerce which demands the most for the least, the 
greatest show for the least money, had gathered all the odds 
and ends and left-overs of toy bargain sales and had dumped 



8 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

them into the large lofts above, to be doled out as best we 
could. "We could not give a much-desired article to any one 
person because, supposing it were there, which was rarely 
the case, we could not get at it or find it ; yet later another 
person might apply and receive the very thing the other had 
wanted. 

And we clerks, going out to lunch or dinner (save the 
mark!), would seek some scrubby little restaurant and eat 
ham and beans, or crullers and coffee, or some other tasteless 
dish, at ten or fifteen cents per head. Hard luck stories, 
comments on what a botch the Herald gift bureau was, on 
the strange characters that showed up — the hooded Niobes and 
dusty Priams, with eyes too sunken and too dry for tears — 
were the order of the day. Here I met a young newspaper 
man, gloomy, out at elbows, who told me what a wretched, 
pathetic struggle the newspaper world presented, but I did 
not believe him although he had worked in Chicago, Denver, 
St. Paul. 

"A poor failure," I thought, "some one who can't write 
and who now whines and wastes his substance in riotous 
living when he has it S ' ' 

So much for the sympathy of the poor for the poor. 

But the Herald was doing very well. Daily it was filling 
its pages with the splendid results of its charity, the poor re- 
lieved, the darkling homes restored to gayety and bliss. . . . 
Can you beat it ? But it was good advertising, and that was 
all the Herald wanted. 

Hey, Rub-a-dub ! Hey, Rub-a-dub-dub ! 



CHAPTER II 

On Christmas Eve there came to our home to spend the 
next two days, which chanced to be Saturday and Sunday, 
Alice Kane, a friend and fellow-clerk of one of my sisters 
in a department store. Because the store kept open until 
ten-thirty or eleven that Christmas Eve, and my labors at 
the Herald office detained me until the same hour, we three 
arrived at the house at nearly the same time. 

I should say here that the previous year, my mother having 
died and the home being in dissolution, I had ventured into 
the world on my own. Several sisters, two brothers and my 
father were still together, but it was a divided and somewhat 
colorless home at best. Our mother was gone. I was already 
wondering, in great sadness, how long it could endure, for she 
had made of it something as sweet as dreams. That tempera- 
ment, that charity and understanding and sympathy! We 
who were left were like fledglings, trying our wings but fearful 
of the world. My practical experience was slight. I was a 
creature of slow and uncertain response to anything practical, 
having an eye single to color, romance, beauty. I was but a 
half-baked poet, romancer, dreamer. 

As I was hurrying upstairs to take a bath and then see 
what pleasures were being arranged for the morrow, I was 
intercepted by my sister with a ' ' Hurry now and come down. 
I have a friend here and I want you to meet her. She 's awful 
nice. ' ' 

At the mere thought of meeting a girl I brightened, for 
my thoughts were always on the other sex and I was forever 
complaining to myself of my lack of opportunity, and of 
lack of courage when I had the opportunity, to do the one 
thing I most craved to do : shine as a lover. Although at her 
suggestion of a girl I pretended to sniff and be superior, still 
I bustled to the task of embellishing myself. On coming 

9 



10 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

into the general livingroom, where a fire was burning brightly, 
I beheld a pretty dark-haired girl of medium height, smooth- 
cheeked and graceful, who seemed and really was guileless, 
good-natured and sympathetic. For a while after meeting her 
I felt stiff and awkward, for the mere presence of so pretty 
a girl was sufficient to make me nervous and self-conscious. 

My brother, E , had gone off early in the evening to 

join the family of some girl in whom he was interested; an- 
other brother, A , was out on some Christmas Eve lark 

with a group of f ellow-employees ; so here I was alone with 

C and this stranger, doing my best to appear gallant 

and clever. 

I recall now the sense of sympathy and interest which I 
felt for this girl from the start. It must have been clear 
to my sister, for before the night was over she had explained, 
by way of tantalizing me, that Miss Kane had a beau. Later 
I learned that Alice was an orphan adopted by a fairly com- 
fortable Irish couple, who loved her dearly and gave her as 
many pleasures and as much liberty as their circumstances 
would permit. They had made the mistake, however, of telling 
her that she was only an adopted child. This gave her a 
sense of forlornness and a longing for a closer and more en- 
during love. 

Such a mild and sweet little thing she was ! I never knew 
a more attractive or clinging temperament. She could play 
the banjo and guitar. I remember marveling at the dexterity 
of her fingers as they raced up and down the frets and across 
the strings. She was wearing a dark green blouse and brown 
corduroy skirt, with a pale brown ribbon about her neck; 
her hair was parted on one side, and this gave her a sort of 
maidenish masculinity. I found her looking at me slyly now 
and then, and smiling at one or another of my affected re- 
marks as though she were pleased. I recounted the nature 
of the work I was doing, but deliberately attempted to con- 
fuse it in her mind and my sister's with the idea that I was 
regularly employed by the Herald as a newspaper man and 
that this was merely a side task. Subsequently, out of sheer 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 11 

vanity and a desire to appear more than I was, I allowed 
her to believe that I was a reporter on this paper. 

It was snowing. We could see great flakes fluttering about 
the gas lamps outside. In the cottage of an Irish family 
across the street a party of merrymakers was at play. I 
proposed that we go out and buy chestnuts and popcorn and 
roast them, and that we make snow punch out of milk, sugar 
and snow. How gay I felt, how hopeful ! In a fit of great 
daring I took one hand of each of my companions and ran, 
trying to slide with them over the snow. Alice's screams 
and laughter were disturbingly musical, and as she ran her 
little feet twinkled under her skirts. At one corner, where 
the stores were brightly lighted, she stopped and did a grace- 
ful little dance under the electric light. 

"Oh, if I could have a girl like this — if I could just have 
her ! " I thought, forgetting that I was nightly telling a Scotch 
girl that she was the sweetest thing I had ever known or 
wanted to know. 

Bedtime came, with laughter and gayety up to the last 
moment. Alice was to sleep with my sister, and preceded me 
upstairs, saying she was going to eat salt on New Year's Eve 
so that she would dream of her coming lover. That night I 
lay and thought of her, and next morning hurried downstairs 
hoping to find her, but she had not come down yet. There 
were Christmas stockings to be examined, of course, which 
brought her, but before eight-thirty I had to leave in order to 
be at work at nine o 'clock. I waved them all a gay farewell 
and looked forward eagerly toward evening, for she was to 
remain this night and the next day. 

Through with my work at five-thirty, I hurried home, and 
then it was that I learned — and to my great astonishment 
and gratification — that she liked me. For when I arrived, 

dressed, as I had been all day, in my very best, E and 

A were there endeavoring to entertain her, E , my 

younger brother, attempting to make love to her. His method 
was to press her toe in an open foolish way, which because of 
the jealousy it waked in me seemed to me out of the depths 
of dullness. From the moment I entered I fancied that 



12 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Alice had been waiting for me. Her winning smile as I 
entered reassured me, and yet she was very quiet when I was 
near, gazing romantically into the fire. 

During the evening I studied her, admiring every detail 
of her dress, which was a bit different from that of the day 
before and more attractive. She seemed infinitely sweet, and 
I flattered myself that I was preferred over my two brothers. 
During the evening, we two being left together for some 
reason, she arose and went into the large front room and 
standing before one of the three large windows looked out 
in silence on the homelike scene that our neighborhood pre- 
sented. The snow had ceased and a full moon was brightening 
everything. The little cottages and flat-buildings nearby 
glowed romantically through their drawn blinds, a red-rib- 
boned Christmas wreath in every window. I pumped up my 
courage to an unusual point and, heart in mouth, followed and 
stood beside her. It was a great effort on my part. 

She pressed her nose to the pane and then breathed on it, 
making a misty screen between herself and the outside upon 
which she wrote my initials, rubbed them out, then breathed 
on the window again and wrote her own. Her face was like 
a small wax flower in the moonlight. I had drawn so close, 
moved by her romantic call, that my body almost touched 
hers. Then I slipped an arm about her waist and was about 
to kiss her when I heard my sister's voice: 

''Now, Al and Theo, you come back!" 

"We must go," she said shamefacedly, and as she started 
I ventured to touch her hand. She looked at me and smiled, 
and we went back to the other room. I waited eagerly for 
other solitary moments. 

Because the festivities were too general and inclusive there 
was no other opportunity that evening, but the next morning, 
church claiming some and sleep others, there was a half-hour 
or more in which I was alone with her in the front room, 
"looking over the family album. I realized that by now she 
was as much drawn to me as I to her, and that, as in the 
case of my Scotch maid, I was master if I chose so to be. I 
was so wrought up in the face of this opportunity, however, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 13 

that I scarcely had courage to do that which I earnestly 
believed I could do. As we stood over the album looking 
at the pictures I toyed first with the strings of her apron 
and then later, finding no opposition, allowed my hand to rest 
gently at her waist, Still no sign of opposition or even con- 
sciousness, I thrilled from head to toe. Then I closed my 
arm gently about her waist, and when it became noticeably 
tight she looked up and smiled. 

"You'd better watch out," she said. "Some one may 
come. ' ' 

"Do you like me a little?" I pleaded, almost choking. 

"I think so. I think you're very nice, anyhow. But you 
mustn't," she said. "Some one may come in," and as I" 
drew her to me she pretended to resist, maneuvering her 
cheek against my mouth as she pulled away. 

She was just in time, for C came into the back parlor 

and said : ' ' Oh, there you are ! I wondered where you were. ' ' 

' ' I was just looking over your album, ' ' Alice said. 

' ' Yes, ' ' I added, ' ' I was showing it to her. ' ' 

' ' Oh yes, ' ' laughed my sister sarcastically. "You and Al — 
I know what you two were trying to do. You!" she ex- 
claimed, giving me a push. "And Al, the silly! She has a 
beau already ! " 

She laughed and went off, but I, hugely satisfied with my- 
self, swaggered into the adjoining room. Beau, or no beau, 
Alice belonged to me. Youthful vanity was swelling my 
chest. I was more of a personage for having had it once more 
proved to me that I was not unattractive to girls. 



CHAPTER III 

When I asked Alice when I should see her again she 
suggested the following Tuesday or Thursday, asking me not 
to say anything to C — — . I had not been calling on her 
more than a week or two before she confessed that there was 
another suitor, a telegraph operator to whom she was engaged 
and who was still calling on her regularly. "When she came 
to our house to spend Christmas, she said, it was with no inten- 
tion of seeking a serious flirtation, though in order not to 
embarrass the sense of opportunity we boys might feel she 
had taken off her engagement ring. Also, she confessed to 
me, she never wore it at the store, for the reason that it 
would create talk and make it seem that she might leave 
soon, when she was by no means sure that she would. In short, 
she had become engaged thus early without being certain 
that she was in love. 

Never were happier hours than those I spent with her, 
though at the time I was in that state of unrest and change 
which afflicts most youths who are endeavoring to discover 
what they want to do in life. On Christmas day my job 
was gone and the task of finding another was before me, but 
this did not seem so grim now. I felt more confident. True, 
the manager of the Herald had told me to call after the 
first of the year, and I did so, but only to find that his sug- 
gestion of something important to come later had been merely 
a ruse to secure eager and industrious service for his bureau. 
When I told him I wanted to become a reporter, he said: 
"But, you see, I have nothing whatsoever to do with that. 
You must see the managing editor on the fourth floor. ' ' 

To say this to me was about the same as to say : "You must 
see God." Nevertheless I made my way to -that floor, but 
at that hour of the morning, I found no one at all. Another 
day, going at three, so complete was my ignorance of news- 

14 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 15 

paper hours, I found only a few uncommunicative individuals 
at widely scattered desks in a room labeled "City Room." 
One of these, after I had asked him how one secured a place 
as a reporter, looked at me quizzically and said: "You want 
to see the city editor. He isn't here now. The best times to 
see him are at noon and six. That's the only time he gives 
out assignments. ' ' 

"Aha!" I thought. " 'Assignments' — so that's what re- 
portorial work is called ! And I must come at either twelve 
or six." So I bustled away, to return at six, for I felt that 
I must get work in this great and fascinating field. "When I 
came at six and was directed to a man who bent over a desk 
and was evidently very much concerned about something, he 
exclaimed: "No vacancies. Nothing open. Sorry," and 
turned away. 

So I went out crestfallen and more overawed than ever. 
"Who was I to attempt to venture into such a wonderland as 
this — I, a mere collector by trade? I doubt if any one 
ever explored the mouth of a cave with more feeling of uncer- 
tainty. It was all so new, so wonderful, so mysterious. I 
looked at the polished doors and marble floors of this new 
and handsome newspaper building with such a feeling as 
might have possessed an Ethiopian slave examining the walls 
and the doors of the temple of Solomon. How wonderful it 
must be to work in such a place as this ! How shrewd and 
wise must be the men whom I saw working here, able and 
successful and comfortable! How great and interesting the 
work they did ! Today they were here, writing at one of these 
fine desks ; tomorrow they would be away on some important 
mission somewhere, taking a train, riding in a Pullman car, 
entering some great home or office and interviewing some im- 
portant citizen. And when they returned they were con- 
gratulated upon having discovered some interesting fact or 
story on which, having reported to their city editor or man- 
aging editor, or having written it out, they were permitted 
to retire in comfort with more compliments. Then they re- 
sorted to an excellent hotel or restaurant, to refresh them- 
selves among interested and interesting friends before retiring 



16 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to rest. Some such hodge-podge as this filled my immature 
brain. 

Despite the discouraging reception of my first overture, I 
visited other newspaper offices, only to find the same, and 
even colder, conditions. The offices in most cases were by no 
means so grand, but the atmosphere was equally chill, and 
the city editor was a difficult man to approach. Often I was 
stopped by an office boy who reported, when I said I was look- 
ing for work, no vacancies. When I got in at all, nearly all 
the city editors merely gave me a quick glance and said: 
''No vacancies." I began to feel that the newspaper world 
must be controlled by a secret cult or order until one lithe 
bony specimen with a pointed green shade over his eyes and 
dusty red hair looked at me much as an eagle might look at 
a pouter pigeon, and asked: 

"Ever worked on a paper before?" 

"No, sir." 

"How do you know you can write?" 

"I don't; but I think I could learn." 

"Learn? Learn? We haven't time to teach anybody here ! 
You better try one of the little papers — a trade paper, maybe, 
until you learn how — then come back, ' ' and he walked off. 

This gave me at least a definite idea as to how I might begin, 
but just the same it did not get me a position. 

Meanwhile, looking here and there and not finding anything, 
I decided, since I had had experience as a collector and must 
live while I was making my way into journalism, to return to 
this work and see if I might not in the meantime get a place 
as a reporter. 

Having been previously employed by an easy-payment in- 
stalment house, I now sought out another, the Corbin Com- 
pany, in Lake Street, not very far from the office of the 
firm for which I had previously worked. From this firm, hav- 
ing been hard pressed for a winter overcoat the preceding 
fall, I had abstracted or held out twenty-five dollars, intend- 
ing to restore it. But before I had been able to manage that a 
slack up in the work occurred, due to the fact that wander- 
ing street agents sold less in winter than in summer, and 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 17 

I was laid off and had to confess that I was short in my 
account. 

The manager and owner, who had seemed to take a fancy- 
to me, said nothing other than that I was making a mistake, 
taking the path that led to social hell. I do not recall that he 
even requested that the money be returned. But I was so 
nervous that I was convinced that some day, unless I re- 
turned the money, I should be arrested, and to avoid this 
I had written him a letter after leaving promising that I 
would pay up. He never even bothered to answer the letter, 
and I believe that if I had returned in the spring, paid the 
twenty-five dollars and asked for work he would have taken 
me on again. But I had no such thought in mind. I held 
myself disgraced forever and only wished to get clear of this 
sort of work. It was a vulture game at best, selling trash to 
the ignorant for twelve and fourteen times its value. Now 
that I was out of it I hated to return. I feared that the first 
thing my proposed employer would do would be to inquire 
of my previous employer, and that being informed of my 
stealing he would refuse to employ me. 

"With fear and trembling I inquired of the firm in Lake 
Street and was told that there was a place awaiting some 
one — "the right party." The manager wanted to know if 
I could give a bond for three hundred dollars ; they had just 
had one collector arrested for stealing sixty dollars. I told 
him I thought I could and decided to explain the proposition 
to my father and obtain his advice since I knew little about 
how a bond was secured. When I learned that the bonding 
company investigated one's past, however, I was terrorized. 
My father, an honest, worthy and defiant German, on being 
told that a bond was required, scouted the idea with much 
vehemence. "Why should any one want a bond from me? he 

demanded to know. Hadn't I worked for Mr. M in the 

same line ? Couldn 't they go there and find out ? At thought 

of M I shook, and, rather than have an investigation, 

dropped the whole matter, deciding not to go near the place 
again. 

But the manager, taken by my guileless look, I presume, 



18 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

called one evening at our house. He had taken a fancy to 
me, he said ; I looked to be honest and industrious ; he liked 
the neighborhood I lived in. He proposed that I should go to 
one of the local bonding companies and get a three hundred 
dollar bond for ten dollars a year, his company paying for 
the bond out of my first week's salary, which was to be only 
twelve dollars to start with. This promised to involve ex- 
plaining about M , but I decided to go to the bonding 

company and refer only to two other men for whom I had 
worked and see what would happen. For the rest, I proposed 
to say that school and college life had filled my years before 
this. If trouble came over M I planned to run away. 

But, to my astonishment and delight, my ruse worked ad- 
mirably. The following Sunday afternoon my new manager 
called and asked me to report the following morning for 
work. 

Oh, those singing days in the streets and parks and show- 
places of Chicago, those hours when in bright or thick lowery 
weather I tramped the highways and byways dreaming chaotic 
dreams. I had all my afternoons to myself after one or two 
o'clock. The speed with which I worked and could walk 
would soon get me over the list of my customers, and then 
I was free to go where I chose. Spring was coming. I was 
only nineteen. Life was all before me, and the feel of plenty 
of money in my pocket, even if it did not belong to me, was 
comforting. And then youth, youth — that lilt and song in 
one's very blood! I felt as if I were walking on tinted clouds, 
among the highlands of the dawn. 

How shall I do justice to this period, which for perfection 
of spirit, ease of soul, was the very best I had so far known ? 
In the first place, because of months of exercise in the open air, 
my physical condition was good. I was certain to get some- 
where in the newspaper world, or so I thought. The condition 
of our family was better than it had ever been in my time, for 
we four younger children were working steadily. Our home 
life, in spite of bickerings among several of my brothers and 
sisters, was still pleasing enough. Altogether we were pros- 
pering, and my father was looking forward to a day when all 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 19 

family debts would be paid and the soul of my mother, as 
well as his own when it passed over, could be freed from too 
prolonged torments in purgatory! For, as a Catholic, he 
believed that until all one 's full debts here on earth were paid 
one's soul was held in durance on the other side. 

For myself, life was at the topmost toss. I was like some 
bird poised on a high twig, teetering and fluttering and ready 
for flight. Again, I was like those flying hawks and buzzards 
that ride so gracefully on still wings above a summer land- 
scape, seeing all the wonders of the world below. Again, I was 
like a song that sings itself, the spirit of happy music that by 
some freak of creation is able to rejoice in its own harmonies 
and rhythms. Joy was ever before me, the sense of some 
great adventure lurking just around the corner. 

How I loved the tonic note of even the grinding wheels 
of the trucks and cars, the clang and clatter of cable and 
electric lines, the surge of vehicles in every street ! The palls 
of heavy manufacturing smoke that hung low over the city 
like impending hurricanes; the storms of wintry snow or 
sleety rain; the glow of yellow lights in little shops at eve- 
ning, mile after mile, where people were stirring and bustling 
over potatoes, flour, cabbages — all these things were the sub- 
stance of songs, paintings, poems. I liked the sections where 
the women of the town were still, at noon, sleeping off the 
debauches of the preceding night, or at night were prepar- 
ing for the gaudy make-believes of their midnight day. I 
liked those sections crowded with great black factories, stock- 
yards, steel works, Pullman yards, where in the midst of Plu- 
tonian stress and clang men mixed or forged or joined or pre- 
pared those delicacies, pleasures and perfections for which the 
world buys and sells itself. Life was at its best here, its prom- 
ise the most glittering. I liked those raw neighborhoods where 
in small, unpainted, tumbledown shanties set in grassless, can- 
strewn yards drunken and lecherous slatterns and brawlers 
were to be found mooning about in a hell of their own. And, 
for contrast, I liked those areas of great mansions set upon 
the great streets of the city in spacious lawns, where liveried 



20 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

servants stood by doors and carriages turned in at spacious 
gates and under heavy porte-cocheres. 

I think I grasped Chicago in its larger material if not in 
its more complicated mental aspects. Its bad was so deli- 
/ ciously bad, its good so very good, keen and succulent, reek- 
less, inconsequential, pretentious, hopeful, eager, new. People 
cursed or raved or snarled — the more fortunate among them, 
but they were never heavy or dull or asleep. In some neigh- 
borhoods the rancidity of dirt, or the stark icy bleakness 
of poverty, fairly shouted, but they were never still, decaying 
pools of misery. On wide bleak stretches of prairie swept by 
whipping winds one could find men who were tanning dog 
or cat hides but their wives were buying yellow plush albums 
or red silk-shaded lamps or blue and green rugs on time, as I 
could personally testify. Churches with gaudy altars and 
services rose out of mucky masses of shanties and gas-tanks; 
saloons with glistening bars of colored glass and mirrors stood 
as the centers and clubs of drear, bleak masses of huts. There 
were vice districts and wealth districts hung with every entic- 
ing luxury that the wit of a commonplace or conventional 
mind could suggest. Such was Chicago. 

In the vice districts I had been paid for shabby rugs and 
lamps, all shamelessly overpriced, by plump naked girls strid- 
ing from bed to dresser to get a purse, and then offered certain 
favors for a dollar, or its equivalent — a credit on the contract 
slip. In the more exclusive neighborhoods I was sent around 
to a side entrance by comfortably dressed women who were too 
proud or too sly to have their neighbors know that they were 
buying on time. Black negresses leered at me from behind 
shuttered windows at noon ; plump wives drew me into risque 
situations on sight; death-bereaved weepers mourned over 
their late lost in my presence — and postponed paying me. But 
I liked the life. I was crazy about it. Chicago was like a 
great orchestra in a tumult of noble harmonies. I was like 
a guest at a feast, eating and drinking in a delirium of ecstasy. 



CHAPTER IV 

But if I was wrought up by the varying aspects of the 
eity, I was equally wrought up by the delights of love, which 
came for the first time fully with the arrival of Alice. Was 
I in love with her? No, as I understand myself now. I 
doubt that I have ever been in love with any one, or wi'th 
anything save life as a whole. Twice or thrice I have devel- 
oped stirring passions but always there was a voice or thought 
within which seemed to say over and over, like a bell at sea: 
"What does it matter? Beauty is eternal. . . . Beauty will come 
again ! ' ' But this thing, life, this picture of effort, this color- 
ful panorama of hope and joy and despair — that did matter ! 
Beauty, like a tinkling bell, the tintings of the dawn, the 
whispering of gentle winds and waters in summer days and 
Arcadian places, was in everything and everywhere. Indeed 
the appeal of this local life was its relationship to eternal 
perfect beauty. That it should go ! That never again, after a 
few years, might I see it more ! That love should pass ! That 
youth should pass ! That in due time I should stand old and 
grizzled, contemplating with age-filmed eyes joys and won- 
ders whose sting and color I could no longer feel or even 
remember — out on it for a damned tragedy and a mirthless 
joke ! 

Alice proved to be in love with me. She lived in a two-flat 
frame house in what was then the far middle-south section 
of the city, a region about Fifty-first and Halsted streets. Her 
foster-father was a railroad watchman, and had saved up a 
few thousand dollars by years of toil. This little apartment 
represented his expenditures plus her taste, such as it was : a 
simple little place, with red plush curtains shielding a pair 
of folding-doors- which separated two large rooms front and 
back. There were lace curtains and white shades at the win- 
dows, a piano (a most soothing luxury for me to contem- 

21 



22 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

plate), and then store furniture: a red velvet settee, a red 
plush rocker, several other new badly designed chairs. 

Quaint little soul! How cheery and dreamful and pulsat- 
ing with life she was when I met her ! Her suitor, as I after- 
wards came to know, was a phlegmatic man of thirty-five, who 
had found in her all that he desired and was eager to marry 
her, as he eventually did. He was wont to call regularly 
on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, taking her occasionally 
to a theater or to dinner downtown. When I arrived on the 
scene I must have disrupted all this, for after a time, because 
I manifested some opposition, leaving her no choice indeed, 
Wednesdays and Sundays became my evenings, and any 
others that I chose. Regardless of my numerous and no doubt 
asinine defects, she was in love with me and willing to accept 
me on my own terms. 

Yes, Alice saw something she wanted and thought she 
could hold. She wanted to unite with me for this little 
span of existence, to go with me hand in hand into the ulti- 
mate nothingness. I think she was a poet in her way, but 
voiceless. When I called the first night she sat primly for a 
little while on one of her red chairs near the window, while 
I occupied a rocker. I had hung up my coat and hat with 
a flourish and had stood about for a while examining every- 
thing, with the purpose of estimating it and her. It all 
seemed cozy and pleasing enough and, curiously, I felt more 
at ease on this my first visit than I ever did at my Scotch 
maid's home. There her thrifty, cautious, religious though 
genial and well-meaning mother, her irritable blind uncle and 
her more attractive young sister disturbed and tended to alien- 
ate me. Here, for weeks and weeks, I never saw Alice's foster- 
parents. When finally I was introduced to them, they grated 
on me not at all. This first night she played a little on her 
piano, then on her banjo, and because she seemed especially 
charming to me I went over and stood behind her chair, decid- 
ing to take her face in my hands and kiss her. Perhaps a 
touch of remorse and in consequence a bit of indecision now 
swayed her, for she got up before I could do it. On the 
instant my assurance became less and yet my mood hardened, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 23 

for I thought she was trifling with me. After the previous 
Sunday it seemed to me that she could do no less than permit 
me to embrace her. I was deciding that the evening was 
about to be a failure, when she came up behind me and said : 
"Don't you think it's rather nice across there, between those 
houses?" 

Over the way a gap between peaked-roofed houses revealed 
a long stretch of prairie, now covered with snow, gas lamps 
flickering in orderly rows, an occasional frame house glowing 
in the distance. 

"Yes," I admitted moodily. 

"This is a funny neighborhood," she ventured. "People 
are always moving in and out in that row of houses over 
there." 

"Are they?" I said, not very much interested now that 
I felt myself defeated. There was a silence and then she laid 
one hand on my arm. 

"You're not mad at me, Dorse?" she asked, using a name 
which my sister had given me. 

The sound of it on her lips, soft and pleading, moved 
me. 

' ' Oh, no, " I replied loftily. ' ' Why should I be ? " 

"I was thinking that maybe I oughtn't to be doing this. 
There's been some one else up to now, you know." 

"Yes." 

"I guess I don't care for him any more or I wouldn't be 
doing what I am." 

"I thought you cared for me. Why did you invite me 
down here ? ' ' 

' ' Oh, Dorse, I do, " she said, placing both her hands on my 
folded arms and looking up into my face with a kind of 
tenseness. "I know it isn't right but I can't help it. You 
have such nice hair and eyes, and you're so tall. Do you care 
for me at all?" 

"Yes," I said, smiling cynically over my victory. "I 
think you're beautiful." I smoothed her cheek with one 
hand while I held her about the waist with the other. 

We went over to the red settee and I took her in my arms 



24 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and held her and kissed her mouth and eyes and neck. She 
clung to me and laughed and told me bits about her work 
and her pompous floor-walker and her social companions, and 
even her fiance. She danced for me when I asked her, doing 
a running overstep clog, sidewise to and fro, her skirts lifted 
to her shoetops. She was sweetly feminine, in no wise ag- 
gressive or bold. I stayed until nearly one in the morning. 
I had nine or ten miles to go by owl cars, arriving home at 
nearly three; but at this time I was not working and so my 
time was my own. 

The thing that troubled me was what my Scotch girl would 
think if she found out (which she never would), and how I 
could extricate myself from a situation which, now that I had 
Alice, was not as interesting as it had been. 



CHAPTER V 

As spring approached this affair moved on apace. The 
work of the Corbin Company was no harder than that of 
the Lovell Company, and I had more time to myself. Be- 
cause of an ingrowing sense of my personal importance and 
because I thought it such a wonderful thing to be a news- 
paper man and so very much less to be a collector, I lied to 
Alice as to what I was doing. When should I be through with 
collecting and begin reporting? I was eager to know all about 
music, painting, sculpture, literature, and to be in those 
places where life is at its best. I was regretful now that I 
had not made better use of my school and college days, and 
so in my free hours I read, visited the art gallery and li- 
brary, went to theaters and concerts. The free intellectual 
churches, or ethical schools, were my favorite places on Sun- 
day mornings. I would sometimes take Alice or my Scotch 
girl to the Theodore Thomas concerts, which were just be- 
ginning at the Auditorium, or to see the best plays and actors : 
Booth, Barrett, Modjeska, Fannie Davenport, Mary Anderson, 
Joseph Jefferson, Nat Goodwin. Thinking of myself as a man 
with a future, I assumed a kind of cavalier attitude toward 

my two sweethearts, finally breaking with N on the 

pretext that she was stubborn and superior and did not love 
me, whereas I really wanted to assume privileges which she, 
with her conventional notions, could not permit and which 
I was not generous enough not to want. As for Alice she 
was perfectly willing to yield, with a view, I have always 
thought, to moving me to marry her. But being deeply 
touched by her very obvious charm, I did nothing. 

Once my work was done of an afternoon, I loitered over 
many things waiting for evening to come, when I should see 
Alice again. Usually I read or visited a gallery or some park. 
Alice was intensely sweet to me. Her eyes were so soft, so 

25 



26 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

liquid, so unprotesting and so unresenting. She was usually- 
gay, with at times a suggestion of hidden melancholy. At 
night, in that great world of life which is the business heart 
of Chicago I used to wait for her, and together, once we had 
found each other in the crowds, we would make our way to 
the great railway station at the end of Dearborn Street, 
where a tall clock-tower held a single yellow clock-face. If it 
chanced to be Tuesday or Thursday I would go home with 
her. On other nights she would sometimes stay down to 
dine with me at some inexpensive place. 

I never knew until toward the end of the following sum- 
mer, when things were breaking up for me in Chicago and 
seemingly greater opportunities were calling me elsewhere, 
that during all this time she had really never relinquished 
her relationship with my predecessor, fearing my instability 
perhaps. By what necessary lies and innocent subterfuges 
she had held him against the time when I might not care for 
her any more I know not. The thing has poignance now. 
Was she unfaithful ? I do not think so. At any rate she was 
tender, clinging and in need of true affection. She would take 
my hand and hold it under her arm or against her heart and 
talk of the little things of the day: the strutting customers 
and managers, the condescending women of social pretensions, 
the other girls, who sometimes spied upon or traitorously 
betrayed each other. Usually her stories were of amusing 
things, for she had no heart for bitter contention. There was 
a note of melancholy running all through her relationship 
with me, however, for I think she saw the unrest and uncer- 
tainty of my point of view. Already my mind 's eye was scan- 
ning a farther horizon, in which neither she nor any other 
woman had a vital part. Fame, applause, power, possibly, 
these were luring me. Once she said to me, her eyes looking 
longingly into mine : 

"Do you really love me, Dorse?" 

"Don't you think I do?" I replied evasively, and yet 
saying to myself that I truly cared for her in my fashion, 
which was true. 

"Yes, I think you do, in your way," she said, and the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 27 

correct interpretation shocked me. I saw myself a stormy- 
petrel hanging over the yellowish-black waves of life and 
never really resting anywhere. I could not ; my mind would 
not let me. I saw too much, felt too much, knew too much. 
What was I, what any one, but a small bit of seaweed on an 
endless sea, flotsam, jetsam, being moved hither and thither — 
by what subterranean tides? 

Oh, Alice, dead or living, eternally sleeping or eternally 
waking, listen to these few true words ! You were beautiful 
to me. My heart was hungry. I wanted youth, I wanted 
beauty, I wanted sweetness, I wanted a tender smile, wide 
eyes, loveliness — all these you had and gave. 

Peace to you ! I do not ask as much for myself. 

My determination to leave the Corbin Company was as- 
sociated with other changes equally important and of much 
more emotional interest. Our home life, now that my mother 
was gone, was most unsatisfactory. What I took to be the 

airs and plotting domination of my sister M , toward whom 

I had never borne any real affection, had become unbearable. 
I disliked her very much, for though she was no better than 
the rest of us, or so I thought at the time, she was nevertheless 
inclined to dogmatize as to the duty of others. Here she was, 
married yet living at home and traveling at such times and to 
such places as suited her husband's convenience, obtaining 
from him scarcely enough to maintain herself in the state 
to which she thought she was entitled, contributing only a 
small portion to the upkeep of the home, and yet setting her- 
self and her husband up as superiors whose exemplary social 
manners might well be copied by all. Her whole manner 
from morning to night, day in and day out, was one of supe- 
riority. Or, so I thought at the time. "I am Mrs. G. A , 

if you please," she seemed to say. "G is doing this. I 

am going to do so-and-so. It can scarcely be expected that 
we, in our high state, should have much to do with the rest 
of you." 

Yet whenever A was in or near Chicago he made our 

home his abiding place. Two of the best rooms on the second 
floor were set aside for his and M 's use. The most stir- 



28 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

ring preparations were made whenever he was coming, the 
house swept, flowers bought, extra cooking done and what not ; 
the moment he had gone things fell to their natural and 

rather careless pace. M retired to her rooms and was 

scarcely seen for days. T , another sister, who despised 

her heartily, would sulk, and when she thought the burden 
of family work was being shouldered on to her would do 
nothing at all. My father was left to go through a routine 
of duties such as fire-building, care of the furnace, market- 
ing, which should have facilitated the housework but which 
in these quarreling conditions made it seem as if he were 

being put upon. C , another sister, who was anything but 

a peacemaker, added fuel to the flames by criticizing the drift 

of things to the younger members : A , E and myself. 

The thing that had turned me definitely against M 

followed a letter which my brother Paul once sent to my 
mother, enclosing a check for ten dollars and intended espe- 
cially for her. Because it was sent to her personally she 
wanted to keep it secret from the others, and to do this she 
sent me to the general postoffice, on which it was drawn, with 
her signature filled in and myself designated as the proper 
recipient. I got the money and returned it to her, but either 
because of her increasing illness or because she still wanted 
to keep it a secret, when Paul mentioned it in another letter 
she said she had not received it. Then she died and the matter 
of the money came up. It was proved by inquiry at the 
postoffice that the money had been paid to me. I confirmed 
this and asserted, which was true, that I had given it to 

mother. M alone, of all the family, felt called upon to 

question this. She visited an inspector at the general post- 
office (a friend of A 's by the way) and persuaded him 

to make inquiry, with a view no doubt to frightening me. 
The result of this was a formal letter asking me to call at 
his office. When I went and found that he was charging me 
with the detention of this money and demanding its return on 
pain of my being sent to prison, I blazed of course and told 
him to go to the devil. When I reached home I was furious. 
I called out my sister M and told her — well, many things. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 29 

For weeks and even months I had a burning desire to strike 
her, although nothing more was ever done or said concerning 
it. For over fifteen years the memory of this one thing di- 
vided us completely, but after that, having risen, as I thought, 
to superior interests and viewpoints, I condescended to be- 
come friendly. 

The first half of 1891 was the period of my greatest bitter- 
ness toward her, and in consequence, when my sister C 

came to me with her complaints and charges we brewed be- 
tween us a kind of revolution based primarily on our opposi- 
tion to M and her airs, but secondarily on the inadequate 

distribution of the family means and the inability of the dif- 
ferent sisters to agree upon the details of the home manage- 
ment. According to C , who was most bitter in her 

charges, both M and T were lazy and indifferent. As 

a matter of fact, I cared as little for C and her woes as 

I did for any of the others. But the thought of this home, 

dominated by M and T — — and supported by us younger 

ones, with father as a kind of pleading watchdog of the 
treasury, weeping in his beard and moaning over the general 
recklessness of our lives, was too much. 

Indeed this matter of money, not idleness or domination, 
was the crux of the whole situation, for if there had been 
plenty of money, or if each of us could have retained his own 

earnings, there would have been little grieving. C was 

jealous of M and T , and of the means with which 

their marital relations supplied them, and although she was 
earning eight dollars a week she felt that the three or four 
which she contributed to the household were far too much. 
A , who earned ten and contributed five, had no com- 
plaint to make, and E , who earned nine and supplied 

four-and-a-half, also had nothing to say. I was earning 
twelve, later fourteen, and gave only six, and very often I 

begrudged much of this. So between us C and I brewed 

a revolution, which ended unsatisfactorily for us all. 

Late in March, a crisis came because of a bitter quarrel 

that sprung up between M and C . C and I 

now proposed, with the aid of A and E if we could 



30 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

get it, either to drive M from the house and take charge 

ourselves, or rent a small apartment somewhere, pool our 
funds and set up a rival home of our own, leaving this one 
to subsist as best it might. It was a hard and cold thing 
to plan, and I still wonder why I shared in it; but then it 
seemed plausible enough. 

However that may be, this revolutionary program was 

worked out to a definite conclusion. With C as the 

whip and planner and myself as general executive, a small 
apartment only a few blocks from our home was fixed upon, 
prices of furniture on time studied, cost of food, light, enter- 
tainment gone into. C , in her eagerness to bring her 

rage to a cataclysmic conclusion, volunteered to do the cook- 
ing and housekeeping alone, and still work downtown as be- 
fore. If each contributed five dollars a week, as we said, 
we would have a fund of over eighty dollars a month, which 
should house and feed us and buy furniture on the instalment 

plan. A was consulted as to this and refused, saying, 

which was the decent thing to say and characteristic of him, 
that we ought to stay here and keep the home together for 

father's sake, he being old and feeble. E , always a lover 

of adventure and eager to share in any new thing, agreed to 
go with us. We had to revise our program, but even with 
only sixty dollars a month as a general fund we thought we 
could get along. 

And so we three, C being the spokesman, had the 

cheek to announce to my father that either M should 

leave and allow us to run the house as we wished or we would 
leave. The ultimatum was not given in any such direct way : 
charges and counter charges were first made ; long arguments 
.and pleadings were indulged in by one side and the other. 

Finally, seeing that there was no hope of forcing M to 

leave, C announced that she was going, alone or with 

others. I said I would follow. E said he was coming — 

and there you were. I never saw a man more distressed than 
my father, one more harassed by what he knew to be the final 
dissolution of the family. He pleaded, but his pleas fell on 
youthful, inconsiderate ears. I went and rented the flat, had 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 31 

the gas turned on and some furniture installed; and then, 
toward the end of March, in blustery weather, we moved. 

Never was a man more distrait than my father during these 
last two or three days of our stay. Having completed the 

details, C , E and I were busy marching to and fro 

at spare moments, carrying clothes, books, pictures and the 
like to the new home. There were open squabbles now be- 
tween C and M as to the possession of certain things, 

but these were finally adjusted without blows. At last we 
were ready to leave, and then came our last adieux to my 

father and A . When my turn came I marched out with a 

hard, cheery, independent look on my face, but I was really 

heavy with a sense of my unfairness and brutality. A 

and my father were the two I really preferred. My father was 
so old and frail. 

"Well," he said with his German accent when I came to 
say good-by, "you're going, are you? I'm sorry, Dorsch. I 
done the best I could. The girls, they won't ever agree, it 
seems. I try, but it don 't seem to do any good. I have prayed 
these last few days. ... I hope you don't ever feel sorry. It's 
C who stirs up all these things. ' ' 

He waved his hands in a kind of despairing way and after 
some pointless and insincere phrases I went out. The cold 
March winds were blowing from the West, and it was raw, 
blowy, sloppy, gray. Tomorrow it would be brighter, but 
tonight 



CHAPTER VI 

As April advanced I left the Corbin Company, determined 
to improve my condition. I was tired of collecting — the same 
districts, the same excuses, innocences, subterfuges. By de- 
grees I had come to feel a great contempt for the average 
mind. So many people were so low, so shifty, so dirty, so 
nondescript. They were food for dreams ; little more. Owing 
to my experience with the manager of the Lovell Company 
in the matter of taking what did not belong to me I had become 
very cautious, and this meant that I should be compelled to 
live from week to week on my miserable twelve dollars. 

In addition, home life had become a horrible burden. The 
house was badly kept and the meals were wretched. Being 
of a quarrelsome, fault-finding disposition and not having 
M or T to fight with, C now turned her atten- 
tions to E and myself. We did not do this and that ; the 

burden of the work was left to her. By degrees I grew into a 
kind of servant. Being told one April Friday of some needs 
that I must supply, and having decided that I could not en- 
dure either this abode or my present work, I took my fate in 
my hands and the next day resigned my job, having in my 
possession sixty-five dollars. I was now determined, come 
what might, never to take another job except one of reporting 
unless I was actually driven to it by starvation, and in this 
mood I came home and announced that I had lost my position 
and that this "home" would therefore have to be given up. 
And how glad I was ! Now I should be rid of this dull flat, 
which was so colorless and burdensome. As I see it now, my 
sister sensibly enough from her point of view, perhaps, was 
figuring that E and I, as dutiful brothers, should sup- 
port her while she spent all her money on clothes. I came 

to dislike her almost as much as I did M , and told 

her gladly this same day that we could not live here any 

32 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 33 

longer. In consequence the furniture company was notified 
to come and get the furniture. Our lease of the place being 
only from month to month, it was easy enough to depart at 

once. E and I were to share a room at the de G s for 

a dollar and a half a week each, such meals as I ate there 
to be paid for at the rate of twenty-five cents each. 

Then and there, as I have since noted with a kind of fatal- 
istic curiosity, the last phase of my rather troublesome youth 
began. Up to and even including this last move to Taylor 
Street I had been intimately identified, in spirit at least, with 
our family and its concentrated home life. During my 
mother's life, of course, I had felt that wherever she was was 
home ; after her death it was the house in which she had lived 
that held me, quite as much as it was my father and those of 
us who remained together to keep up in some manner the 
family spirit. When the spell of this began to lessen, owing 
to bitter recrimination and the continuous development of 
individuality in all of us, this new branch home established 
by three of us seemed something of the old place and spirit- 
ually allied to it ; but when it fell, and the old home broke 
up at about the same time, I felt completely adrift. 

What was I to do with myself now? I asked. Where go? 
Here I was, soon (in three months) to be twenty-one years 
old, and yet without trade or profession, a sort of nondescript 
dreamer without the power to earn a decent living and yet 
with all the tastes and proclivities of one destined to an in- 
dependent fortune. My eyes were constantly fixed on people 
in positions far above my own. Those who interested me 
most were bankers, millionaires, artists, executives, leaders, 
the real rulers of the world. Just at this time the nation 
was being thrown into its quadrennial ferment, the presiden- 
tial election. The newspapers were publishing reams upon 
reams of information and comment. David B. Hill, then 
governor of New York, Grover Cleveland of New York, 
Thomas B. Hendricks of Indiana, and others were being widely 
and favorably discussed by the Democratic party, whose con- 
vention was to be held here in Chicago the coming June. 



34 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Among the Kepublicans, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, James 
G. Blaine of Maine, Thomas B. Allison of Iowa, and others 
were much to the fore. 

If by my devotion to minor matters I have indicated that 
I was not interested in public affairs I have given an inade- 
quate account of myself. It is true that life at close range 
fascinated me, but the general progress of Europe and 
America and Asia and Africa was by no means beyond my 
intellectual inquiry. By now I was a reader of Emerson, 
Carlyle, Macaulay, Froude, John Stuart Mill and others. The 
existence of Nietzsche in Germany, Darwin, Spencer, Wallace 
and Tyndall in England, and what they stood for, was in 
part at least within the range of my intuition, if not my exact 
knowledge. In America, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lin- 
coln, the history of the Civil War and the subsequent drift of 
the nation to monopoly and so to oligarchy, were all within 
my understanding and private philosophizing. 

And now this national ferment in regard to political pre- 
ferment and advancement, the swelling tides of wealth and 
population in Chicago, the upward soaring of names and 
fames, stirred me like whips and goads. I wanted to get up — 
oh, how eagerly ! I wanted to shake off the garments of the 
commonplace in which I seemed swathed and step forth into 
the public arena, where I should be seen and understood for 
what I was. ' ' No common man am I, " I was constantly saying 
to myself, and I would no longer be held down to this shabby 
world of collecting in which I found myself. The newspapers 
— the newspapers — somehow, by their intimacy with every- 
thing that was going on in the world, seemed to be the swiftest 
approach to all this of which I was dreaming. It seemed to 
me as if I understood already all the processes by which they 
were made. Reporting, I said to myself, must certainly be 
easy. Something happened — one car ran into another ; a man 
was shot; a fire broke out; the reporter ran to the scene, ob- 
served or inquired the details, got the names and addresses of 
those immediately concerned, and then described it all. To 
reassure myself on this point I went about looking for acci- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 35 

dents on my own account, or imagining them, and then wrote 
out what I saw or imagined. To me the result, compared 
with what I found in the daily papers, was quite satisfactory. 
Some paper must give me a place. 



CHAPTER VII 

Picture a dreamy cub of twenty-one, long, spindling, a 
pair of gold-framed spectacles on his nose, his hair combed 
a la pompadour, a new spring suit consisting of light check 
trousers and bright blue coat and vest, a brown fedora hat, 
new yellow shoes, starting out to force his way into the news- 
paper world of Chicago. At that time, although I did not 
know it, Chicago was in the heyday of its newspaper prestige. 
Some of the nation's most remarkable editors, publishers and 
newspaper writers were at work there: Melville E. Stone, 
afterward general manager of the Associated Press; Victor F. 
Lawson, publisher of the Daily News; Joseph Medill, editor 
and publisher of the Tribune; Eugene Field, managing editor 
of the Morning Record; William Penn Nixon, editor and 
publisher of the Inter-Ocean; George Ade; Finley Peter 
Dunne; Brand Whitlock; and a score of others subsequently 
to become well known. 

Having made up my mind that I must be a newspaper man, 
I made straight for the various offices at noon and at six 
o 'clock each day to ask if there was anything I could do. Very 
soon I succeeded in making my way into the presence of the 
various city and managing editors of all the papers in 
Chicago, with the result that they surveyed me with the 
cynical fishy eye peculiar to newspaper men and financiers 
and told me there was nothing. 

One day in the office of the Daily News a tall, shambling, 
awkward-looking man in a brown flannel shirt, without coat or 
waistcoat, suspenders down, was pointed out to me by an 
office boy who saw him slipping past the city editorial door. 

"Wanta know who dat is?" he asked. 

"Yes," I replied humbly, grateful even for the attention 
of office boys. 

' ' "Well, dat 's Eugene Field. Heard o ' him, ain 'tcha ? ' ' 

36 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 37 

"Sure," I said, recalling the bundle of incoherent MS. 
which I had once thrust upon him. I surveyed his retreating 
figure with envy and some nervousness, fearing he might 
psychically detect that I was the perpetrator of that unsolic- 
ited slush and abuse me then and there. 

In spite of my energy, manifested for one solid week be- 
tween the hours of twelve and two at noon and five-thirty and 
seven at night I got nothing. Indeed it seemed to me as I 
went about these newspaper offices that they were the 
strangest, coldest, most haphazard and impractical of places. 
Gone was that fine ambassadorial quality with which a few 
months before I had invested them. These rooms, as I now 
saw, were crowded with commonplace desks and lamps, the 
floors strewn with newspapers. Office boys and hirelings 
gazed at you in the most unfriendly manner, asked what you 
wanted and insisted that there was nothing — they who knew 
nothing. By office boys I was told to come after one or two in 
the afternoon or after seven at night, when all assignments 
had been given out, and when I did so I was told that there 
was nothing and would be nothing. I began to feel desperate. 

Just about this time I had an inspiration. I determined 
that, instead of trying to see all of the editors each day and 
missing most of them at the vital hour, I would select one 
paper and see if in some way I could not worm myself into 
the good graces of its editor. I now had the very sensible 
notion that a small paper would probably receive me with 
more consideration than one of the great ones, and out of them 
all chose the Daily Globe, a struggling affair financed by one 
of the Chicago politicians for political purposes only. 

You have perhaps seen a homeless cat hang about a doorstep 
for days and days meowing to be taken in: that was I. The 
door in this case was a side door and opened upon an alley. 
Inside was a large, bare room filled with a few rows of tables 
set end to end, with a railing across the northern one-fourth, 
behind which sat the city editor, the dramatic and sporting 
editors, and one editorial writer. Outside this railing, near 
the one window, sat a large, fleshy gelatinous, round-faced 
round-headed young man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. 



38 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

He had a hard, keen, cynical eye, and at first glance seemed 
to be most vitally opposed to me and everybody else. As it 
turned out, he was the Daily Globe's copy-reader. Nothing 
was said to me at first as I sat in my far corner waiting for 
something to turn up. By degrees some of the reporters began 
to talk to me, thinking I was a member of the staff, which eased 
my position a little during this time. I noticed that as soon 
as all the reporters had gone the city editor became most 
genial with the one editorial writer, who sat next him, and 
the two often went off together for a bite. 

Parlous and yet delicious hours! Although I felt all the 
time as though I were on the edge of some great change, still 
no one seemed to want me. The city editor, when I ap- 
proached after all the others had gone, would shake his head 
and say: "Nothing today. There's not a thing in sight," 
but not roughly or harshly, and therein lay my hope. So 
here I would sit, reading the various papers or trying to write 
out something I had seen. I was always on the alert for some 
accident that I might report to this city editor in the hope that 
he had not seen it, but I encountered nothing. 

The ways of advancement are strange, so often purely ac- 
cidental. I did not know it, but my mere sitting here in this 
fashion eventually proved a card in my favor. A number of 
the employed reporters, of whom there were eight or nine 
(the best papers carried from twenty to thirty), seeing me sit 
about from twelve to two and thinking I was employed here 
also, struck up occasional genial and enlightening conversa- 
tions with me. Reporters rarely know the details of staff ar- 
rangements or changes. Some of them, finding that I was 
only seeking work, ignored me; others gave me a bit of 
advice. Why didn't I see Selig of the Tribune, or Herbst of 
the Herald 1 ? It was rumored that staff changes were to be 
made there. One youth learning that I had never written a 
line for a newspaper, suggested that I go to the editor of the 
City Press Association or the United Press, where the most in- 
experienced beginners were put to work at the rate of eight 
dollars a week. This did not suit me at all. I felt that I 
could write. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 39 

Finally, however, my mere sitting about in this fashion 
brought me into contact with that copy-reader I have de- 
scribed, John Maxwell, who remarked one day out of mere 
curiosity : 

"Are you doing anything special for the Globe?" 

"No," I replied. 

"Just looking for work?" 

"Yes." 

"Ever work on any paper?" 

"No." 

"How do you know you can write?" 

"I don't. I just feel that I can. I want to see if I can't 
get a chance to try." 

He looked at me, curiously, amusedly, cynically. 

"Don't you ever go around to the other papers?" 

"Yes, after I find out there's nothing here." 

He smiled. "How long have you been coming here like 
this?" 

"Two weeks." 

"Every day?" 

"Every day." 

He laughed now, a genial, rolling, fat laugh. 

"Why do you pick the Globe? Don't you know it's the 
poorest paper in Chicago ? ' ' 

"That's why I pick it," I replied innocently. "I thought 
I might get a chance here. ' ' 

"Oh, you did!" he laughed. "Well, you may be right 
at that. Hang around. You may get something. Now I'll 
tell you something : this National Democratic Convention will 
open in June. They'll have to take on a few new men here 
then. I can't see why they shouldn't give you a chance as 
well as anybody else. But it's a hell of a business to be 
wanting to get into," he added. 

He began taking off his coat and waistcoat, rolling up his 
sleeves, sharpening his blue pencils and taking up stacks of 
copy. The while I merely stared at him. Every now and 
then he would look at me through his round glasses as though 
I were some strange animal. I grew restless and went out. 



40 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

But after that he greeted me each day in a friendly way, 
and because he seemed inclined to talk I stayed and talked 
with him. 

What it was that finally drew us together in a minor bond 
of friendship I have never been able to discover. I am sure 
he considered me of little intellectual or reportorial import 
and yet also I gathered that he liked me a little. He seemed 
to take a fancy to me from the moment of our first conversa- 
tion and included me in what I might call the Globe family 
spirit. He was interested in politics, literature, and the news- 
paper life of Chicago. Bit by bit he informed me as to the 
various editors, who were the most successful newspaper men, 
how some reporters did police, some politics, and some just 
general news. From him I learned that every paper carried 
a sporting editor, a society editor, a dramatic editor, a po- 
litical man. There were managing editors, Sunday editors, 
news editors, city editors, copy-readers and editorial writers, 
all of whom seemed to me marvelous — men of the very great- 
est import. And they earned — which was more amazing still 
— salaries ranging from eighteen to thirty-five and even sixty 
and seventy dollars a week. From him I learned that this 
newspaper world was a seething maelstrom in which clever 
men struggled and fought as elsewhere; that some rose and 
many fell ; that there was a roving element among newspaper 
men that drifted from city to city, many drinking themselves 
out of countenance, others settling down somewhere into some 
fortunate berth. Before long he told me that only recently 
he had been copy-reader on the Chicago Times' but due to 
what he characterized as ' ' office politics, ' ' a term the meaning 
of which I in no wise grasped, he had been jockeyed out of his 
place. He seemed to think that by and large newspaper men 
while interesting and in some cases able, were tricky and 
shifty and above all, disturbingly and almost heartlessly in- 
considerate of each other. Being young and inexperienced 
this point of view made no impression on me whatsoever. If 
I thought anything I thought that he must be wrong, or that, 
at any rate, this heartlessness would never trouble me in any 
way, being the live and industrious person that I was. 



CHAPTER VIII 

It made me happy to know that whether or not I was taken 
on I had at least achieved one friend at court. Maxwell ad- 
vised me to stick. 

"You'll get on," he said a day or two later. "I believe 
you've got the stuff in you. Maybe I can help you. You'll 
probably be like every other damned newspaper man once 
you get a start : an ingrate ; but I '11 help you just the same. 
Hang around. That convention will begin in three or four 
weeks now. I'll speak a good word for you, unless you tie 
up with some other paper before then." 

And to my astonishment really, he was as good as his word. 
He must have spoken to the city editor soon after this, for the 
latter asked me what I had been doing and told me to hang 
around in case something should turn up. 

But before a newspaper story appeared for me to do a new 
situation arose which tied me up closer with this prospect 
than I had hoped for. The lone editorial writer previously 
mentioned, a friend and intimate of the city editor, had just 
completed a small work of fiction which he and the city 
editor in combination had had privately printed, and which 
they were very eager to sell. It was, as I recall it, very badly 
done, an immature imitation of Tom Sawyer without any real 
charm or human interest. The author himself, Mr. Gissel, was 
a picayune yellow-haired person. He spent all his working 
hours, as I came to know, writing those biased, envenomed and 
bedeviling editorials which are required by purely partisan 
journals. I gathered as much from conversations that were 
openly carried on before me between himself and the city 
editor, the managing editor and an individual who I later 
learned was the political man. They were ' ' out " as I heard the 
managing editor say, one day "to get" some one — on orders 
from some individual of whom at that time I knew nothing, 

41 



42 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and Mr. Gissel was your true henchman or editorial mercenary, 
a "peanut" or "squeak" writer, penning what he was ordered 
to pen. Once I understood I despised him but at first he 
amused me though I could not like him. Whenever he had 
concocted some particularly malicious or defaming line as I 
learned in time, he would get up and dance about, chortling 
and cackling in a disconcerting way. So for the first time 
I began to see how party councils and party tendencies were 
manufactured or twisted or belied, and it still further reduced 
my estimate of humanity. Men, as I was beginning to find — 
all of us — were small, irritable, nasty in their struggle for 
existence. This little editor, for 'instance, was not interested 
in the Democratic party (which this paper was supposed to 
represent), or indeed in party principles of any kind. He did 
not believe what he wrote, but, receiving forty dollars a week, 
he was anxious to make a workmanlike job of it. Just at this 
time he was engaged in throwing mud at the national Republi- 
can administration, the mayor and the governor, as well as 
various local politicians, whom the owner of the paper wished 
him to attack. 

"What a pitiful thing journalism or our alleged "free press" 
was, I then and there began to gather — dimly enough at first 
I must admit. What a shabby compound of tricky back-room 
councils, public professions, all looking to public favors and 
fames which should lead again to public contracts and 
financial emoluments ! Journalism, like politics, as I was now 
soon to see, was a slough of muck in which men were raking 
busily and filthily for what their wretched rakes might uncover 
in the way of financial, social, political returns. I looked 
at this dingy office and then at this little yellow-haired rat 
of an editor one afternoon as he worked, and it came to me 
what 'a desperately subtle and shifty thing life was. Here 
he was, this little runt, scribbling busily, and above him were 
strong, dark, secretive men, never appearing publicly perhaps 
but paying him his little salary privately, dribbling it down to 
him through a publisher and an editor-in-chief and a managing 
editor, so that he might be kept busy misconstruing, lying, 
intellectually cheating. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 43 

But the plan tie had in regard to his book : The graduating 
class of the Hyde Park High School, of which he had been a 
member a few years before, had numbered about three hun- 
dred 'Students. Of these two hundred were girls, one hundred 
and fifty of whom he claimed to have known personally. One 
afternoon as I was preparing to leave after all the assignments 
had been given out, the city editor called me over and, with 
the help of this scheming little editorial writer, began to ex- 
plain to me a plan by which, if I carried it out faithfully, I 
could connect myself with the Daily Globe as a reporter. I 
was to take a certain list of names and addresses and as many 
copies of The Adventures of Harry Munn, or some such name, 
as I could carry and visit each of these quondam schoolmates 
of Mr. Gissel at their homes, where I was to recall to their 
minds that he was an old schoolmate of theirs, that this his 
first book related to scenes with which they were all familiar, 
and then persuade them if possible to buy a copy for one 
dollar. My reward for this was to be ten cents a copy on all 
copies sold, and in addition (and this was the real bait) I was 
to have a try out on the Globe as a reporter at fifteen dollars 
a week if I succeeded in selling one hundred and twenty 
copies within the next week or so. 

I took the list and gathered up an armful of the thin cloth- 
covered volumes, fired by the desire thus to make certain my 
entrance into the newspaper world. I cannot say that I was 
very much pleased with my mission, but my necessity or 
aspiration was so great that I was glad to do it just the same. 
I was nervous and shamefaced as I approached the first home 
on my list, and I suffered aches and pains in my vanity and 
my sense of the fitness of things. The only salve I could find 
in the whole thing was that Mr. Gissel actually knew these 
people and that I could say I came personally from him as a 
friend and fellow-member of the Globe staff. It was a thin 
subterfuge, but apparently it went down with a few of those 
pretty unsophisticated girls. The majority of them lived in 
the best residences of the south side, some of them mansions 
of the truly rich whose democratic parents had insisted upon 
sending their children to the local high school. In each case, 



44 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

upon inquiring for a girl, with the remark that I came from 
Mr. Gissel of the Globe, I was received in the parlor or recep- 
tion-room and told to wait. Presently the girl would come 
bustling in and listen to my tactful story, smiling contemptu- 
ously perhaps at my shabby mission or opening her eyes in 
surprise or curiosity. 

"Mr. Gissel? Mr. Gissel?" said one girl inquiringly. 

"Why, I don't recall any such person " and she retired, 

leaving me to make my way out as best I might. 

Another exclaimed: "Harry Gissel! Has that little snip 
written a book? The nerve — to send you around to sell his 
book! Why do you do it? I will take one, because I am 
curious to see the kind of thing he has done, but I'll wager 
right now it's as silly as he is. He's invented some scheme to 
get you to do this because he knows he couldn 't sell the book 
in any other way." 

Others remembered him and seemed to like him; others 
bought the book only because he was a member of their class. 
Some struck up a genial conversation with me. 

In spite of my distress at having to do this work there were 
compensations. It gave me a last fleeting picture of that new, 
sunny prosperity which was the most marked characteristic of 
Chicagoans of that day, and contrasted so sharply with the 
scenes of poverty which I had recently seen. In this region, for 
it was June, newly fledged collegians, freshly returned from 
the colleges of the East and Europe, were disporting them- 
selves about the lawns and within the open- windowed chambers 
of the houses. Traps and go-carts of many of the financially 
and socially elect filled the south side streets. The lawn tennis 
suit, the tennis game, the lawn party and the family croquet 
game were everywhere in evidence. The new-rich and those 
most ambitious financially at that time were peculiarly suscep- 
tible I think to the airs and manners of the older and more 
pretentious regions of the world. They were bent upon inter- 
preting their new wealth in terms of luxury as they had 
observed it elsewhere. Hence these strutting youths in Eng- 
lish suits with turned-up trousers, swagger sticks and flori- 
colored ties and socks intended to suggest the spirit of London, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 45 

as they imagined it to be; hence the high-headed girls in 
flouncy, lacy dresses, their cheeks and eyes bright with color, 
who no doubt imagined themselves to be great ladies, and who 
carried themselves with an air of remote disdain. The whole 
thing had the quality of a play well staged : really the houses, 
the lawns, the movements of the people, their games and 
interests all harmonizing after the fashion of a play. They 
saw this as a great end in itself, which, perhaps, it is. To 
me in my life-hungry, love-hungry state, this new-rich pros- 
perity with its ease, its pretty women and its effort at refine- 
ment was quite too much. It set me to riotous dreaming and 
longing made me ache to lounge and pose after this same 
fashion. 



CHAPTER IX 

In due course of time, I having performed my portion of 
the contract, it became the duty of the two editors to fulfill 
their agreement with me. Every day for ten days I had been 
turning in the cash for from five to fifteen books, thereby 
establishing my reputation for industry and sobriety. Mr. 
Gissel was very anxious to know at the end of each day whom 
I had seen and how the mention of his name was received. 
Instead of telling him of the many who laughed or sniffed 
or bought to get rid of me gracefully, I gave him flattering 
reports. Lately, by way of reward I presume, he had taken 
to reading to me the cleverest passages in his editorials. Mr. 
Sullivan, the city editor, confided to me one day that he was 
from a small town in central Illinois not unlike the Warsaw 
from which I hailed, and which I then roughly and jestingly 
sketched to him, and from then on we were on fairly good 
terms. He dug up a number of poems and granted me the 
favor of reading them. Some of them were almost as good 
as similar ones by Whittier and Bryant, after whom they were 
obviously modeled. Today I know them to be bad, or 
mediocre; then I thought they were excellent and grieved to 
think that any one should be going to make a reputation as 
a great poet, while I, the only real poet extant (although I 
had done nothing as yet to prove it), remained unrecognized. 

I did not know until later that I might not have secured a 
place even now, so numerous were the applications of clever 
and experienced newspaper men, had it not been for the 
influence of my friend Maxwell. For one reason or another, 
my errant youth perhaps, my crazy persistence and general 
ignorance of things journalistic, he had become interested in 
me and seemed fairly anxious to see me get a start. Out 
of the tail of his eye he had been watching. When I arrived 
of an evening and there was no one present he sometimes 

46 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 47 

inquired what I was doing, and by degrees, although I had 
been cautioned not to tell, he extracted the whole story of 
Gissel's book. I even loaned him a copy of the book, which 
he read and pronounced rot, adding: "They ought to be 
ashamed of themselves, sending you out on a job of this kind. 
You're better than that." 

As the end of my task drew near and I was dreading another 
uncertain wait, he put in a good word for me. But even then 
I doubt if I should have had a trial had it not been for the 
convention which was rapidly drawing near. On the day the 
newspapers were beginning to chronicle the advance arrival 
of various leaders from all parts of the country, I was taken 
on at fifteen dollars a week, for a week or two anyhow, and 
assigned to watch the committee rooms in the hotels Palmer, 
Grand Pacific, Auditorium and Richelieu. There was another 
youth who was set to work with me on this, and he gave me 
some slight instruction. Over us was the political man, who 
commanded other men in different hotels and whose presence 
I had only noted when the convention was nearly over. 

If ever a youth was cast adrift and made to realize that he 
knew nothing at all about the thing he was so eager to do, that 
youth was I. ' ' Cover the hotels for political news, ' ' were my 
complete instructions, but what the devil was political news? 
What did they want me to do, say, write? At once I was 
thoroughly terrified by this opportunity which I had so eagerly 
sought, for now that I had it I did not know how to make 
anything clear. 

For the first day or two or three therefore I wandered like 
a lost soul about the corridors and parlor floors and ' ' commit- 
tee rooms" of these hotels which I was supposed to cover, 
trying to find out where the committee rooms were, who and 
what were the men in them, what they were trying to do. No 
one seemed to want to tell me anything, and, as dull as it may 
seem, I really could not guess. I had no clear idea of what 
was meant by the word "politics" as locally used. Various 
country congressmen and politicians brushed past me in a 
most secretive manner ; when I hailed them with the informa- 
tion that I was from the Globe they waved me off with: "I 



48 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

am only a delegate; you can't get anything out of me. See 
the chairman. ' ' Well, what was a chairman ? I didn 't know. 
I did not even know that there had been lists published in all 
the papers, my own included, giving the information which 
I was so anxiously seeking ! 

I had no real understanding of politics or party doings or 
organization. I doubt if I knew how men came to be nomi- 
nated, let alone elected. I did not know who were the various 
State leaders, who the prospective candidates, why one candi- 
date might be preferred to another. The machinations of 
such an institution as Tammany Hall, or the things called 
property interests, were as yet beyond me. My mind was too 
much concerned with the poetry of life to busy itself with 
such minor things as politics. However, I did know that 
there was a bitter feud on between David Bennett Hill, gov- 
ernor of New York, and Grover Cleveland, ex-President of the 
United States, both candidates for nomination on the Demo- 
cratic ticket, and that the Tammany organization of New York 
City was for Hill and bitterly opposed to Cleveland. I also 
knew that the South was for any good Southerner as opposed 
to Cleveland or Hill, and that a new element in the party 
was for Richard Bland, better known as "Silver Dick," of 
Missouri. I also knew by reputation many of the men who 
had been in the first Cleveland administration. 

Imagine a raw youth with no knowledge of the political 
subtleties of America trying to gather even an inkling of 
what was going on ! The nation and the city were full of 
dark political trafficking, but of it all I was as innocent as a 
baby. The bars and lobbies were full of inconsequential 
spouting delegates, who drank, swore, sang and orated at the 
top of their lungs. Swinging Southerners and Westerners in 
their long frock-coats and wide-brimmed hats amused me. 
They were forever pulling their whiskers or mustachios, drink- 
ing, smoking, talking or looking solemn or desperate. In many 
cases they knew no more of what was going on than I did. 
I was told to watch the movements of Benjamin Ryan Tillman, 
senator from South Carolina, and report any conclusions or 
rumors of conclusions as to how his delegation would vote. I 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 49 

had a hard time finding where his committee was located, and 
where and when if ever it deliberated, but once I identified my 
man I never left him. I dogged his steps so persistently that 
he turned on me one afternoon as he was going out of the 
Palmer House, fixed me with his one fiery eye and said : 

''Young man, what do you want of me anyhow?" 

"Well, you're Senator Tillman, aren't you?" 

"Yes, sir. I'm Senator Tillman." 

"Well, I'm a reporter from the Globe. I've been told to 
learn what conclusions your delegation has reached as to 
how it will vote." 

"You and your editor of the Globe be damned!" he replied 
irritably. "And I want you to quit following me wherever I 
go. Just now I'm going for my laundry, and I have some 
rights to privacy. The committee will decide when it's good 
and ready, and it won't tell the Globe or any other paper. 
Now you let me alone. Follow somebody else." 

I went back to the office the first evening at five-thirty and 
sat down to write, with the wild impression in my mind that 
I must describe the whole political situation not only in 
Chicago but in the nation. I had no notion that there was 
a supervising political man who, in conjunction with the 
managing editor and editor-in-chief, understood all about cur- 
rent political conditions. 

"The political pot," I began exuberantly, "was already 
beginning to seethe yesterday. About the lobbies and corri- 
dors of the various hotels hundreds upon hundreds of the 
vanguard of American Democracy — etc., etc." 

I had not scrawled more than eight or nine pages of this 
mush before the city editor, curious as to what I had dis- 
covered and wondering why I had not reported it to him, 
came over and picked up the many sheets which I had turned 
face down. 

"No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "You mustn't write on both 
sides of the paper ! Don 't you know that ? For heaven 's sake. 
And all this stuff about the political pot boiling is as old as the 
hills. Why, every country jake paper for thousands of miles 
East and West has used it for years and years. You're not 



50 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to write the general stuff. Here, Maxwell, see if you can't 
find out what Dreiser has discovered and show him what to 
do with it. I haven't got time." And he turned me over to 
my gold-spectacled mentor, who eyed me very severely. He 
sat down and examined my copy with knitted brows. He 
had a round, meaty, cherubic face which seemed all the more 
ominous because he could scowl fiercely, and his eyes could 
blaze with a cold, examining, mandatory glance. 

"This is awful stuff!" he said as he read the first page. 
' ' He 's quite right. You want to try and remember that you 're 
not the editor of this paper and just consider yourself a 
plain reporter sent out to cover some hotels. Now where 'd 
you go today?" 

I told him. 

"What'd you see?" 

I described as best I could the whirling world in which I 
had been. 

"No, no! I don't mean that! That might be good for a 
book or something but it 's not news. Did you see any particu- 
lar man ? Did you find out anything in connection with any 
particular committee ? ' ' 

I confessed that I had tried and failed. 

"Very good!" he said. "You haven't anything to write," 
and he tore up my precious nine pages and threw them into 
the waste basket. "You'd better sit around here now until 
the city editor calls you," he added. "He may have some- 
thing special he wants you to do. If not, watch the hotels 
for celebrities — Democratic celebrities — or committee meet- 
ings, and if you find any try to find out what 's going on. The 
great thing is to discover beforehand who's going to be nomi- 
nated — see ? You can 't tell from talking to four or five people, 
but what you find out may help some one else to piece out 
what is to happen. "When you come back, see me. And unless 
you get other orders, come back by eleven. And call up two 
or three times between the time you go and eleven. ' ' 

Because of these specific instructions I felt somewhat 
encouraged, although my first attempt at writing had been 
thrown into the waste basket. I sat about until nearly seven, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 51 

when I was given an address and told to find John G. Carlisle, 
ex-Secretary of the Treasury, and see if I could get an inter- 
view with him. Failing this, I was to "cover" the Grand 
Pacific, Palmer House and Auditorium, and report all impor- 
tant arrivals and delegations. 

Even if I had secured the desired interview I am sure I 
should have made an awful botch of it, but fortunately I 
could not get it. Only one thing of importance developed for 
me during the evening, and that was the presence of a Demo- 
cratic United States Supreme Court Justice at the Grand 
Pacific who, upon being intercepted by me as he was going to 
his room for the night and told that I was from the Globe, 
eyed me genially and whimsically. 

"My boy," he said, "you're just a young new reporter, I 
can see that. Otherwise you wouldn 't waste your time on me. 
But I like reporters: I was one myself years ago. Now this 
hotel and every other is full of leaders and statesmen discuss- 
ing this question of who's to be President. I'm not dis- 
cussing it, first of all because it wouldn 't become a Justice of 
the United States Supreme Court to do so, and in the next 
place because I don't have to: my position is for life. I'm 
just stopping here for one day on my way to Denver. You'd 
better go around to these committee rooms and see if they 
can't tell you something," and, smiling and laying one hand 
on my shoulder in a fatherly way, he dismissed me. 

1 ' My ! " I thought. ' ' What a fine thing it is to be a reporter ! 
All I have to do is to say I'm from the Globe and even a 
Justice of the United States Supreme Court is smiling and 
agreeable to me ! ' ' 

I hurried to a phone to tell Maxwell, and he said: "He 
don't count. Write a stick of it if you want to, and I'll 
look it over." 

' ' How much is a stick ? " I asked eagerly and curiously. 

"About a hundred and fifty words." 

So much for a United States Supreme Court Justice in 
election days. 



CHAPTER X 

I cannot say that I discovered anything of import this night 
or the next or the next, although I secured various interviews 
which, after much wrestling with my spirit and some hard, 
intelligent, frank statements from my friend, were whipped 
into shape for fillers. 

"The trouble with you, Dreiser," said Maxwell as I was 
trying to write out what the Supreme Court Justice had said 
to me, "is that you haven't any training and you're trying 
to get it now when we haven't the time. Over in the Tribune 
office they have a sign which reads: WHO OR WHAT? 
HOW? WHEN? WHERE? All those things have to be 
answered in the first paragraph — not in the last paragraph, 
or the middle paragraph, but in the first. Now come here. 
Gimme that stuff," and he cut and hacked, running thick 
lines of blue lead through my choicest thoughts and restating 
in a line or two all that I thought required ten. A sardonic 
smile played about his fat mouth, and I saw by his twinkling 
eyes that he felt that it was good for me. 

' ' News is information, ' ' he went on as he worked. ' ' People 
want it quick, sharp, clear — do you hear? Now you probably 
think I'm a big stiff, chopping up your great stuff like this, 
but if you live and hold this job you'll thank me. As a 
matter of fact, if it weren't for me you wouldn't have this 
job now. Not one copy-reader out of a hundred would take 
the trouble to show you," and he looked at me with hard, 
cynical and yet warm gray eyes. 

I was wretched with the thought that I should be dropped 
once the convention was over, and so I bustled here and there, 
anxious to find something. Of a morning, from six o'clock 
until noon, I studied all the papers, trying to discover what 
all this fanfare was about and just what was expected of me. 
The one great thing to find out was who was to be nominated 

52 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 53 

and which delegations or individuals would support the suc- 
cessful candidate. Where could I get the information? The 
third day I talked to Maxwell about it, and as a favor he 
brought out a paper in which a rough augury was made which 
showed that the choice lay between David Bennett Hill and 
Grover Cleveland, with a third man, Senator McEntee, as a 
dark horse. Southern sentiment seemed to be centering about 
him, and in case no agreement could be reached by the New 
York delegation as to which of its two opposing candidates it 
would support their vote might be thrown to this third man. 

Of course this was all very confusing to me. I did my best 
to get it straight. Learning that the Tammany delegation, 
two thousand strong, was to arrive from New York this same 
day and that the leaders were to be quartered at the Audi- 
torium, I made my way there, determined to obtain an inter- 
view with no less a person than Richard Croker, who, along 
with Bourke Cochran, and a hard-faced, beefy individual by 
the name of John F. Carroll seemed to be the brains and 
mouthpiece of the Tammany organization. In honor of their 
presence, the Auditorium was decorated with flags and ban- 
ners, some of them crossed with tomahawks or Indian feathers. 
Above the onyx-lined bar was a huge tiger with a stiff pro- 
jecting tail which when pulled downward, as it was every 
few seconds by one bartender and another, caused the papier 
mdche image to emit a deep growl. This delighted the crowd, 
and after each growl there was another round of drinks. 
Red-faced men in silk hats and long f rockcoats slapped each 
other on the back and bawled out their joy or threats or 
prophecies. 

On the first floor above the office of the hotel, were Richard 
Croker, his friend and adviser, Carroll, and Bourke Cochran. 
They sat in the center of a great room on a huge red plush 
divan, receiving and talking. 

As a representative of the Globe, a cheap nickel star fast- 
ened to one of the lapels of my waistcoat and concealed by 
my coat, my soul stirred by being allowed to mingle in affairs 
of great import, I finally made my way to the footstool of this 
imposing group and ventured to ask for an interview with 



54 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Croker himself. The great man, short, stocky, carefully, al- 
most too carefully, dressed, his face the humanized replica 
of that of a tiger, looked at me in a genial, quizzical, con- 
descending way and said : " No interviews. ' ' I remember the 
patent leather button shoes with the gray suede tops, the 
heavy gold ring on one finger, and the heavy watch-chain 
across his chest. 

"You won't say who is to be nominated?" I persisted nerv- 
ously. 

"I wish I could," he grinned. "I wouldn't be sitting here 
trying to find out." He smiled again and repeated my ques- 
tion to one of his companions. They all looked at me with 
smiling condescension and I beat a swift retreat. 

Defeated though I was, I decided to write out the little 
scene, largely to prove to the city editor that I had actually 
seen Croker and been refused an interview. 

I went down to the bar to review the scene being enacted 
there. "While I was standing at the bar drinking a lemonade 
there came a curious lull. In the midst of it the voices of 
two men near me became audible as they argued who would 
be nominated, Cleveland, Hill or some third man, not the one 
I have mentioned. Bursting with my new political knowl- 
edge and longing to air it, I, at the place where one of the 
strangers mentioned the third man as the most likely choice, 
solemnly shook my head as much as to say: "You are all 
wrong. ' ' 

"Well, then, who do you think?" inquired the stranger, who 
was short, red-faced, intoxicated. 

"Senator McEntee, of South Carolina," I replied, feeling 
as though I were stating an incontrovertible truth. 

A tall, fair-complexioned, dark-haired Southerner in a wide- 
brimmed white hat and flaring frockcoat paused at this mo- 
ment in his hurried passage through the room and, looking at 
the group, exclaimed : 

"Who does me the honah to mention my name in connection 
with the Presidency ? I am Senator McEntee of South Caro- 
lina. No intrusion, I hope ? ' ' 

I and the two others stared in confusion. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 55 

"None whatever," I replied with an air, thinking how in- 
teresting it was that this man of all people should be passing 
through the room at this time. ' ' These gentlemen were saying 

that of would be nominated, and I was going 

to say that sentiment is running more in your favor. ' ' 

"Well, now, that is most interesting, my young friend, and 
I'm glad to hear you say it. It's an honah to be even men- 
tioned in connection with so great an office, however small my 
qualifications. And who are you, may I ask?" 

"My name in Dreiser. I represent the Chicago Globe." 

"Oh, do you? That makes it doubly interesting. Won't 
you come along with me to my rooms for a moment? You 
interest me, young man, you really do. How long have you 
been a reporter?" 

"Oh, for nearly a year now," I replied grandly. 

"And have you ever worked for any other paper?" 

"Yes; I was on the Herald last fall." 

He seemed elated by his discovery. He must have been 
one of those swelling nonentities flattered silly by this chance 
discussion of his name in a national convention atmosphere. 
An older newspaper man would have known that he had 
not the least chance of being seriously considered. Somebody 
from the South had to be mentioned, as a compliment, and 
this man was fixed upon as one least likely to prove disturbing 
later. 

He bustled out to a shady balcony overlooking the lake, 
ordered two cocktails and wanted to know on what I based 
my calculation. In order to not seem a fool I now went over 
my conversation with Maxwell. I spoke of different delega- 
tions and their complexions as though these conclusions were 
my own, when as a matter of fact I was quoting Maxwell 
verbatim. My hearer seemed surprised at my intelligence. 

"You seem to be very well informed," he said genially, 
"but I know you're wrong. The Democratic party will never 
go to the South for a candidate — not for some years anyway. 
Just the same, since you've been good enough to champion 
me in this public fashion, I would like to do something for 
you in return. I suppose your paper is always anxious for 



56 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

advance news, and if you bring it in you get the credit. Now 
at this very moment, over in the Hotel Richelieu, Mr. William 
C. Whitney and some of his friends — Mr. Croker has just 
gone over there — are holding a conference. He is the one 
man who holds the balance of power in this convention. He 
represents the moneyed interests and is heart and soul for 
Grover Cleveland. Now if you want a real beat you'd better 
go over there and hang about. Mr. Whitney is sure to make 
a statement some time today or tomorrow. See his secretary, 

Mr. , and tell him I sent you. He will do anything 

for you he can." 

I thanked him, certain at last I had a real piece of 
news. This conference was the most important event that 
would or could take place in the whole convention. I was 
so excited that I wanted to jump up and run away. 

' ' It will keep, ' ' he said, noting my nervousness. ' ' No other 
newspaper man knows of it yet. Nothing will be given out 
yet for several hours because the conference will not be over 
before that time." 

' ' But I 'd like to phone my office, ' ' I pleaded. 

' ' All right, but come back. ' ' 

I ran to the nearest telephone. I explained my beat to the 
city editor and, anxious lest I be unable to cover it, asked 
him to inform the head political man. He was all excitement 
at once, congratulated me and told me to follow up this 
conference. Then I ran back to my senator. 

"I see," he said, "that you are a very industrious and eager 
young man. I like to see that. I don't want to say anything 
which will set up your hopes too much, because things don't 
always work out as one would wish, but did any one ever sug- 
gest to you that you would make a good private secretary ? ' ' 

"No, sir," I replied, flattered and eager. 

"Well, from what I have seen here today I am inclined 
to think you would. Now I don't know that I shall be re- 
turned to the Senate after this year — there's a little dispute 
in my State — but if I am, and you want to write me after 
next January, I may be able to do something for you. I've 
seen a lot of bright young fellows come up in the newspaper 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 57 

profession, and I've seen a lot go down. If you're not too 
much attached to it, perhaps you would like this other better." 

He smiled serenely, and I could have kissed his hands. At 
the same time, if you please, I was already debating whether 
one so promising as myself should leave the newspaper pro- 
fession ! 

But even more than my good fortune at gleaning this bit 
of news or beat, as it proved, I was impressed by the com- 
pany I was keeping and the realm in which I now moved as 
if by right — great hotels, a newspaper office with which I was 
connected, this senator, these politicians, the display of com- 
fort and luxury on every hand. Only a little while back I 
was an inexperienced, dreaming collector for an " easy-pay- 
ment" company, and now look at me! Here I sat on this 
grand balcony, the senator to my right, a table between us, 
all the lovely panorama of the lake and Michigan Drive below. 
What a rise! From now on, no doubt, I would do much 
better. Was I not even now being offered the secretaryship 
to a senator? 

In due time I left and ran to the Richelieu, but my brain 
was seething with my great rise and my greater achievement 
in being the first to know of and report to my paper this 
decisive conference. If that were true I should certainly have 
discovered what my paper and all papers were most eager to 
know. 



CHAPTER XI 

What the senator had told me was true. The deciding con- 
ference was on, and I determined to hang about the corri- 
dors of the Richelieu until it was over. The secretary, whom 
I found closeted with others (not newspaper men) in a room 
on the second floor, was good enough to see me when I men- 
tioned Senator McEntee's name, and told me to return at 
six-thirty, when he was sure the conference would be over 
and a general statement be issued to the press. If I wished, 
I might come back at five-thirty. This dampened my joy in 
the thought that I had something exclusive, though I was 
later cheered by the thought that I had probably saved my 
paper from defeat anyhow for we were too poor to belong 
to the general news service. As a matter of fact, my early 
information was a cause of wonder in the office, the political 
man himself coming down late in the night to find out how I 
had learned so soon. I spoke of my friend Senator McEntee 
as though I had known him for years. The political man 
merely looked at me and said: "Well, you ought to get 
along in politics on one of the papers, if nowhere else." 

The capture of this one fact, as I rather felt at the time, 
was my making in this newspaper office and hence in the 
newspaper world at large, in so far as I ever was made. 

At five-thirty that afternoon I was on hand, and, true to his 
word, the secretary outlined exactly what conclusions the 
conference had reached. Afterward he brought out a type* 
written statement and read from it such facts as he wished 
me to have. Cleveland was to be nominated. Another man, 
Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, of whom I had never heard, was 
to be nominated for Vice-President. There were other de- 
tails, so confusing that I could scarcely grasp them, but I made 
some notes and flew to the office and tried to write out all I 
had heard. I know now that I made a very bad job of it, but 

58 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 59 

Maxwell worked so hard and so cheerfully that he saved 
me. From one source and another he confirmed or modified 
my statements, wrote an intelligent introduction and turned 
it in. 

"You're one of the damnedest crack-brained loons I ever 
saw," he said at one place, cutting out a great slice of my 
stuff, "but you seem to know how to get the news just the 
same, and you're going to be able to write. If I could 
just keep you under my thumb for four or five weeks I think 
I could make something out of you. ' ' 

At this I ventured to lay one hand over his shoulder in an 
affectionate and yet appealing way, but he looked up frown- 
ingly and said : ' ' Cut the gentle con work, Theodore. I know 
you. You're just like all other newspaper men, or will be: 
grateful when things are coming your way. If I were out of a 
job or in your position you'd do just like all the others: pass 
me up. I know you better than you know yourself. Life is 
a God-damned stinking, treacherous game, and nine hundred 
and ninety-nine men out of every thousand are bastards. I 
don 't know why I do this for you, ' ' and he cut some more of 
my fine writing, ' ' but I like you. I don 't expect to get any- 
thing back. I never do. People always trim me when I 
want anything. There's nobody home if I'm knocking. But 
I'm such a God-damned fool that I like to do it. But don't 
think I 'm not on, or that I 'm a genial ass that can be worked 
by every Tom, Dick and Harry. ' ' And after visiting me with 
that fat superior smile he went on working. I stared, nervous, 
restless, resentful, sorrowful, trying to justify myself to life 
and to him. 

" If I had a real chance, ' ' I said, ' ' I would soon show you. ' ' 

The convention opened its sessions the next day, and be- 
cause of my seeming cleverness I was given a front seat in the 
press-stand, where I could hear all speeches, observe the crowd, 
trade ideas with the best newspaper men in the city and the 
country. In a day, if you will believe it, and in spite of 
the fact that I was getting only fifteen dollars a week, my 
stock had risen so that, in this one office at least, I was looked 
upon as a newspaper man of rare talent, an extraordinarily 



60 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

bright boy sure to carve out a future for himself, one to be 
made friends with and helped. Here in this press-stand I 
was now being coached by one newspaper man and another in 
the intricacies of convention life. I was introduced to two 
other members of our staff who were supposed to be experi- 
enced men, both of them small, clever, practical-minded in- 
dividuals well adapted to the work in hand. One of them, 
Harry L. Dunlap, followed my errant fortunes for years, 
securing a place through me in St. Louis and rising finally 
to be the confidential adviser of one of our Presidents, William 
Howard Taft — a not very remarkable President to be adviser 
to at that. The other, a small brown-suited soul, Brady by 
name, came into my life for a very little while and then 
went, I know not where. 

But this convention, how it thrilled me ! To be tossed into 
the vortex of national politics at a time when the country 
was seething over the possible resuscitation of the old Demo- 
cratic party to strength and power was something like liv- 
ing. I listened to the speeches, those dully conceived flights 
and word gymnastics and pyrotechnics whereby backwoods 
statesmen, district leaders and personality-followers seek to 
foist upon the attention of the country their own personali- 
ties as well as those of the individuals whom they admire. 
Although it was generally known that Cleveland was to be 
nominated (the money power of America having fixed upon 
him) and it was useless to name any one else, still as many 
as ten different "statesmen" great leaders, saviors were put 
in nomination. Each man so mentioned was the beau ideal 
of a nation 's dream of a leader, a statesman, a patriot, lover of 
liberty and of the people. This in itself was a liberal educa- 
tion and slowly but surely opened my eyes. I watched with 
amazement this love of fanfare and noise, the way in which 
various delegations and individual followers loved to shout 
and walk up and down waving banners and blowing horns. 
Different States or cities had sent large delegations, New York 
a marching club two thousand strong, all of whom had seats 
in this hall, and all were plainly instructed to yell and demon- 
strate at the mention of a given name. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 61 

The one thing I heard which seemed rather important at 
the time, beautiful, because of a man's voice and gestures, 
was a speech by Bourke Cochran, exhorting the convention to 
nominate his candidate, David Bennett Hill, and save the 
party from defeat. Indeed his speech, until later I heard 
William Jennings Bryan, seemed to me the best I had ever 
heard, clear, sonorous, forcible, sensible. He had something to 
say and he said it with art and seeming conviction. He had 
presence too, a sort of Herculean, animal-like effrontery. He 
made his audience sit up and pay attention to him, when as 
a matter of fact it was interested in talking privately, one 
member to another. I tried to take notes of what he was 
saying until one of my associates told me that the full minutes 
of his speech could soon be secured from the shorthand re- 
porters. 

Being in this great hall cheek by jowl with the best of the 
Chicago newspaper world thrilled me. "Now," I said to 
myself, ' ' I am truly a newspaper man. If I can only get in- 
teresting things to write about, my fortune is made." At 
once, as the different forceful reporters of the city were 
pointed out to me (George Ade, Finley Peter Dunne, 
"Charlie" Seymour, Charles d'Almy), my neck swelled as 
does a dog's when a rival appears on the scene. Already, 
at mere sight of them, I was anxious to try conclusions with 
them on some important mission and so see which of us was 
the better man. Always, up to the early thirties, I was 
so human as to conceive almost a deadly opposition to any 
one who even looked as though he might be able to try con- 
clusions with me in anything. At that time, I was ready 
for a row, believing, now that I had got thus far, that I was 
destined to become one of the greatest newspaper men that 
ever lived! 

But this convention brought me no additional glory. I did 
write a flowery description of the thing as a whole, but only 
a portion of it was used. I did get some details of committee 
work, which were probably incorporated in the political man's 
general summary. The next day, Cleveland being nominated, 
interest fell off. Thousands packed their bags and departed. 



62 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

I was used for a day or two about hotels gathering one bit 
of news and another, but I could see that there was no import 
to what I was doing and began to grow nervous lest I should 
be summarily dropped. I spoke to Maxwell about it. 

"Do you think they'll drop me ? ' ' I asked. 

"Not by a damned sight!" he replied contentiously. 
"You've earned a show here; it's been promised you ; you've 
made good, and they ought to give it to you. Don't you 
say anything; just leave it to me. There's going to be a con- 
ference here tomorrow as to who's to be dropped and who 
kept on, and I'll have my say then. You saved the day for 
us on that nomination stuff, and that ought to get you a 
show. Leave it to me." 

The conference took place the next day and of the five men 
who had been taken on to do extra work during the conven- 
tion I and one other were the only ones retained, and this 
at the expense of two former reporters dropped. At that, 
I really believe I should have been sent off if it had not been 
for Maxwell. He had been present during most of the 
transactions concerning Mr. Gissel's book and thought I de- 
served work on that score alone, to say nothing of my sub- 
sequent efforts. I think he disliked the little editorial writer 
very much. At any rate when this conference began Max- 
well, according to Dunlap who was there and reported to me, 
sat back, a look of contented cynicism on his face not unlike 
that of a fox about to devour a chicken. The names of sev- 
eral of the new men were proposed as substitutes for the old 
ones when, not hearing mine mentioned, he inquired: 

"Well, what about Dreiser?" 

"Well, what about him?" retorted Sullivan, the city edi- 
tor. "He's a good man, but he lacks training. These other 
fellows are experienced. ' ' 

"I thought you and Gissel sort of agreed to give him a show 
if he sold that book for you?" 

"No, I didn't," said Sullivan. "I only promised to give 
him a tryout around convention time. I've done that." 

"But he's the best man on the staff today," insisted Max- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 63 

well. "He brought in the only piece of news worth having. 
He's writing better every day." 

He bristled, according to Dunlap, and Sullivan and Gissel, 
taking the hint that the quarrel might be carried higher up 
or aired inconveniently, changed their attitude completely. 

"Oh, well," said Sullivan genially, "let him come on. I'd 
just as lief have him. He may pan out." 

And so on I came, at fifteen dollars a week, and thus my 
newspaper career was begun in earnest. 



CHAPTER XII 

This change from insecurity to being an accredited news- 
paper man was delightful. For a very little while, a year or 
so, • it seemed to open up a clear straight course which if 
followed energetically must lead me to great heights. Of 
course I found that beginners were very badly paid. Salaries 
ranged from fourteen to twenty-five dollars for reporters i 
and as for those important missions about which I had always 
been reading, they were not even thought of here. The best 
I could learn of them in this office was that they did exist — 
on some papers. Young men were still sent abroad on mis- 
sions, or to the "West or to Africa (as Stanley), but they 
had to be men of proved merit or budding genius and con- 
nected with papers of the greatest importance. How could one 
prove oneself to be a budding genius ? 

Salary or no salary, however, I was now a newspaper man, 
with the opportunity eventually to make a name for myself. 

Having broken with the family and with my sister C , I 

was now quite alone in the world and free to go anywhere 
and do as I pleased. I found a front room in Ogden Place 
overlooking Union Park (in which area I afterwards placed 
one of my heroines). I could walk from here to the office 
in a little over twenty minutes. My route lay through either 
Madison Street or Washington Boulevard east to the river, 
and morning and night I had ample opportunity to speculate 
on the rancid or out-at-elbows character of much that I saw. 
Both "Washington and Madison, from Halsted east to the 
river, were lined with vile dens and tumbledown yellow and 
gray frame houses, slovenly, rancorous, unsolved and possibly 
unsolvable misery and degeneracy, whole streets of degraded, 
dejected, miserable souls. Why didn't society do better by 
them? I often asked of myself then. Why didn't they do 
better by themselves? Did God, who, as had been drummed 

64 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 65 

into me up to that hour was all wise, all merciful, omnipresent 
and omnipotent make people so or did they themselves have 
something to do with it ? Was government to blame, or they 
themselves? Always the miseries of the poor, the scandals, 
corruptions and physical deteriorations which trail folly, 
weakness, uncontrolled passion fascinated me. I was never 
tired of looking at them, but I had no solution and was not 
willing to accept any, suspecting even then that man is the 
victim of forces over which he has no control. As I walked 
here and there through these truly terrible neighborhoods, I 
peered through open doors and patched and broken windows 
at this wretchedness and squalor, much as a man may tread 
the poisonous paths of a jungle, curious and yet fearsome. 

It was this nosing and speculative tendency, however, which 
helped me most, as I soon found. Journalism, even in Chi- 
cago, was still in that discursive stage which loved long-winded 
yarns upon almost any topic. Nearly all news stories were 
padded to make more of them than they deserved, especially 
as to color and romance. All specials were being written in 
imitation of the great novelists, particularly Charles Dickens, 
who was the ideal of all newspaper men and editors as well 
as magazine special writers (how often have I been told to 
imitate Charles Dickens in thought and manner!). The city 
editors wanted not so much bare facts as feature stories, color, 
romance; and, although I did not see it clearly at the time, 
I was their man. 

Write? 

Why, I could write reams upon any topic when at last I 
discovered that I could write at all. One day some one — 
Maxwell, I suppose — hearing me speak of what I was seeing 
each day as I came to or went from the office to my room, sug- 
gested that I do an article on Chicago 's vilest slum, which lay 
between Halsted and the river, Madison and Twelfth streets, 
for the next Sunday issue, and this was as good as meat and 
drink for me. I visited this region a few times between one 
and four in the morning, wandering about its clattering 
boardwalks, its dark alleys, its gloomy mire and muck atmos- 
phere. Chicago's wretchedness was never utterly tame, dis- 



66 A BOOK 'ABOUT MYSELF 

consolate or hang-dog, whatever else it might be; rather, it 
was savage, bitter and at times larkish and impish. The vile 
slovens, slatterns, prostitutes, drunkards and drug fiends who 
infested this region all led a strident if beggarly or horrible 
life. Saloon lights and smells and lamps gleaming smokily 
from behind broken lattices and from below wooden sidewalk 
levels, gave it a shameless and dangerous color. Accordions, 
harmonicas, jew's-harps, clattering tin-pan pianos and stringy 
violins were forever going ; paintless rotting shacks always re- 
sounded with a noisy blasphemous life between twelve and 
four ; oaths, foul phrases ; a Hogarthian shamelessness and re- 
conciliation to filth everywhere — these were some of the things 
that characterized it. Although there was a closing-hour law 
there was none here as long as it was deemed worth while to 
keep open. Only at four and five in the morning did a heavy 
peace seem to descend, and this seemed as wretched as the 
heavier vice and degradation which preceded it. 

In the face of such a scene or picture as this my mind in- 
variably paused in question. I had been reared on dogmatic 
religious and moral theory, or at least had been compelled 
to listen to it all my life. Here then was a part of the work 
of an omnipotent God, who nevertheless tolerated, apparently, 
a most industrious devil. Why did He do it? Why did 
nature, when left to itself, devise such astounding slums and 
human muck heaps ? Harlots in doorways or behind windows 
or under lamp-posts in these areas, smirking and signaling 
creatures with the dullest or most fox -like expression and with 
heavily smeared lips and cheeks and blackened eyebrows, were 
ready to give themselves for one dollar, or even fifty cents, and 
this in the heart of this budding and prosperous West, a land 
flowing with milk and honey ! What had brought that about 
so soon in a new, rich, healthy, forceful land — God? devil? 
or both working together toward a common end? Near at 
hand were huge and rapidly expanding industries. The street- 
cars and trains, morning and evening, were crowded with ear- 
nest, careful, saving, seeking, moderately well-dressed people 
who were presumably anxious to work and lay aside a com- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 67 

petence and own a home. Then why was it that these others 
lived in such a hell ? "Was God to blame ? Or society ? 

I could not solve it. This matter of being, with its differ- 
ences, is permanently above the understanding of man, I fear. 

I smiled as I thought of my father's attitude to all this. 
There he was out on the west side demanding that all crea- 
tures of the world return to Christ and the Catholic Church, 
see clearly, whether they could or not, its grave import to 
their immortal souls; and here were these sows and terma- 
gants, wretched, filthy, greasy. And the men low-browed, 
ill-clad, rum-soaked, body-racked ! Mere bags of bones, many 
of them, blue-nosed, scarlet-splotched, diseased — if God should 
get them what would He do with them ? On the other hand, 
in the so-called better walks of life, there were so many 
strutting, contentious, self-opinionated swine-masters whose 
faces were maps of gross egoism and whose clothes were almost 
a blare of sound. 

I think I said a little something of all this in the first news- 
paper special I ever wrote. It seemed to open the eyes of my 
superiors. 

' ' You know, Theodore, ' ' Maxwell observed to me as he read 
my copy the next morning between one and three, ' ' you have 
your faults, but you do know how to observe. You bring a 
fresh mind to bear on this stuff; anyhow I think maybe you're 
cut out to be a writer after all, not just an ordinary newspaper 
man. ' ' He lapsed into silence, and then at periods as he read 
he would exclaim: "Jesus Christ!" or "That's a hell of a 
world ! ' ' Then he would fall foul of some turgid English and 
with a kind of malicious glee would cut and hack and restate 
and shake his head despairingly, until I was convinced that 
I had written the truckiest rot in the world. At the close, 
however, he arose, dusted his lap, lit a pipe and said: "Well, 
I think you're nutty, but I believe you're a writer just the 
same. They ought to let you do more Sunday specials. ' ' And 
then he talked to me about phases of the Chicago he knew, 
contrasting it with a like section in San Francisco, where he 
had once worked. 



68 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

"A hell of a fine novel is going to be written about some 
of these things one of these days," he remarked; and from 
now on he treated me with such equality that I thought I 
must indeed be a very remarkable man. 



CHAPTER XIII 

This world of newspaper men who now received me on 
terms of social equality, who saw life from a purely opportun- 
istic, and yet in the main sentimentally imaginative, viewpoint 
broadened me considerably and finally liberated me from 
moralistic and religionistic qualms. So many of them were 
hard, gallant adventurers without the slightest trace of the 
nervousness and terror of fortune which agitated me. They 
had been here, there, everywhere — San Francisco, Los An- 
geles, New York, Calcutta, London. They knew the ways of 
the newspaper world and to a limited extent the workings of 
society at large. The conventional-minded would have called 
them harsh, impracticable, impossible, largely because they 
knew nothing of trade, that great American standard of ability 
and force. Most of them, as I soon found, were like John 
Maxwell, free from notions as to how people were to act and 
what they were to think. To a certain extent they were con- 
fused by the general American passive acceptance of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount and the Beatitudes as governing principles, 
but in the main they were nearly all mistrustful of these 
things, and of conventional principles in general. 

They did not believe, as I still did, that there was a nxed 
moral order in the world which one contravened at his peril. 
Heaven only knows where they had been or what they had 
seen, but they misdoubted the motives, professed or secret, 
of nearly every man. No man, apparently, was utterly and 
consistently honest, that is, no man in a powerful or dominant 
position ; and but few were kind or generous or truly public- 
spirited. As I sat in the office between assignments, or fore- 
gathered with them at dinner or at midnight in some one 
of the many small restaurants frequented by newspaper men, 
I heard tales of all sorts of scandals : robberies, murders, for- 
nications, incendiarisms, not only in low life but in our so- 

69 



70 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

called high life. Most of these young men looked upon life 
as a fierce, grim struggle in which no quarter was either given 
or taken, and in which all men laid traps, lied, squandered, 
erred through illusion : a conclusion with which I now most 
heartily agree. The one thing I would now add is that the 
brigandage of the world is in the main genial and that in our 
hour of success we are all inclined to be more or less liberal 
and warm-hearted. 

But at this time I was still sniffing about the Sermon on the 
Mount and the Beatitudes, expecting ordinary human flesh 
and blood to do and be those things. Hence the point of view 
of these men seemed at times a little horrific, at other times 
most tonic. 

"People make laws for other people to live up to," Maxwell 
once said to me, "and in order to protect themselves in what 
they have. They never intend those laws to apply to them- 
selves or to prevent them from doing anything they wish to do. ' ' 

There was a youth whose wife believed that he did not 
drink. On two occasions within six weeks I was sent as envoy 
to inform his wife that he had suddenly been taken ill with in- 
digestion and would soon be home. Then Maxwell and Brady 
would bundle him into a hack and send him off, one or two 
of us going along to help him into his house. So solemnly 
was all this done and so well did we play our parts that his 
wife believed it for a while — long enough for him to pull him- 
self together a year later and give up drinking entirely. An- 
other youth boasted that he was syphilitic and was curing 
himself with mercury; another there was whose joy it was to 
sleep in a house of prostitution every Saturday night, and so 
on. I tell these things not because I rejoice in them but merely 
to indicate the atmosphere into which I was thrown. Neither 
sobriety nor virtue nor continence nor incontinence was either 
a compelling or preventive cause of either success or failure 
or had anything to do with true newspaper ability; rather 
men succeeded by virtue of something that was not intimately 
related to any of these. If one could do anything which the 
world really wanted it would not trouble itself so much about 
one's private life. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 71 

Another change that was being brought about in me was 
that which related to my personal opinion of myself, the feel- 
ing I was now swiftly acquiring that after all I amounted to 
something, was somebody. A special or two that I wrote, 
thanks largely to Maxwell's careful schooling, brought me to 
the forefront among those of the staff who were writing for 
the Sunday supplement. A few news stories fell to my lot 
and I handled them with a freedom which won me praise on 
all sides. Not that I felt at the time that I was writing them 
so well or differently as that I was most earnestly concerned 
to state what I saw or felt or believed. I even essayed a 
few parables of my own, mild, poetic commentaries on I 
scarcely recall what, which Maxwell scanned with a scowling 
eye at first but later deigned to publish, affixing the signature 
of Carl Dreiser because he had decided to nickname me 
''Carl." This grieved me, for I was dying to see my own 
name in print ; but when they appeared I had the audacity to 
call upon the family and show them, boasting of my sudden 
rise in the world and saying that I had used the name Carl 
as a compliment to a nephew. 

During this time I was taking a rather lofty hand with 
Alice because of my great success, unmindful of the fact that 
I had been boasting for months that I was connected with one 
of the best of the local papers and telling her that I did not 
think it so wonderful. But now I began to think that I was 
to be called to much higher realms, and solemnly asked myself 
if I should ever want to marry. A number of things helped 
to formulate this question in me. For one thing, I had no 
sooner been launched into general assignments than one af- 
ternoon, in seeking for the pictures of a group of girls who 
had taken part in some summer-night festival, I encountered 
one who seemed to be interested in me, a little blonde of about 
my own age, very sleek and dreamy. She responded to my 
somewhat timid advances when I called on her and conde- 
scended to smile as she gave me her photograph. I drew close 
to her and attempted a flirtation, to which she was not averse, 
and on parting I asked if I might call some afternoon or eve- 
ning, hoping to crowd it in with my work. She agreed, and 



72 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

for several Sundays and week-nights I was put to my utmost 
resources to keep my engagements and do my work, for the 
newspaper profession that I knew, tolerated neither week-days 
nor Sundays off. I had to take an assignment and shirk it in 
part or telephone that I was delayed and could not come at all. 
Thus early even I began to adopt a cavalier attitude toward 
this very exacting work. Twice I took her to a theater, once to 
an organ recital, and once for a stroll in Jackson Park; by 
which time she seemed inclined to yield to my blandishments 
to the extent of permitting me to put my arms about her and 
even to kiss her, protesting always that I was wanton and 
forward and that she did not know whether she cared for me 
so much or not. Charming as she was, I did not feel that I 
should care for her very much. She was beautiful but too 
lymphatic, too carefully reared. Her mother, upon hearing of 
me, looked into the fact of whether I was truly connected with 
the Globe and then cautioned her daughter to be careful about 
making new friends. I saw that I was not welcome at that 
house and thereafter met her slyly. I might have triumphed 
in this case had I been so minded and possessed of a little 
more courage, but as I feared that I should have to undergo 
a long courtship with marriage at the end of it, my ardor 
cooled. Because she was new to me and comfortably stationed 

and better dressed than either Alice or N had ever been, 

I esteemed her more highly, made invidious comparisons from 
a material point of view, and wished that I could marry 
some such well-placed girl without assuming all the stern obli- 
gations of matrimony. 

During the second month of my work on the Globe there 
arrived on the scene a man who was destined to have a very 
marked effect on my career. He was a tall, dark, broad- 
shouldered, slender-legged individual of about forty-five or 
fifty, with a shock of curly black hair and a burst of smuggler- 
like whiskers. He was truly your Bret Harte gold-miner type, 
sloven, red-eyed at times, but amazingly intelligent and genial, 
reminding me not a little of my brother Rome in his best 
hours. He wore a long dusty, brownish-black frockcoat and a 
pair of black trousers specked, gummed, shined and worn by 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 73 

tobacco, food, liquor and rough usage. His feet were incased 
in wide-toed shoes of the old "boot-leather" variety, and the 
swirl of Jovian locks and beard was surmounted by a wide- 
brimmed black hat such as Kentucky colonels were wont to 
affect. His nose and cheeks were tinted a fiery red by much 
drinking, the nose having a veinous, bulbous, mottled and 
strawberry texture. 

This man was John T. McEnnis, a well-known middle-West 
newspaper man of that day, a truly brilliant writer whose 
sole fault was that he drank too much. Originally from St. 
Louis, the son of a well-known politician there, he had taken 
up journalism as the most direct avenue to fame and fortune. 
At forty-five he found himself a mere hanger-on in this pro- 
fession, tossed from job to job because of his weakness, his skill 
equaled if not outrivaled by that of younger men! It was 
commonly said that he could drink more and stand it better 
than any other man in Chicago. 

''Why, he can't begin to work unless he's had three or 
four drinks to limber him up," Harry Dunlap once said to 
me. "He has to have six or seven more to get through till 
evening. ' ' He did not say how many were required to carry 
him on until midnight, but I fancy he must have consumed 
at least a half dozen more. He was in a constant state of 
semi-intoxication, which was often skillfully concealed. 

During my second month on the Globe McEnnis was made 
city editor in place of Sullivan, who had gone to a better 
paper. Later he was made managing editor. I learned from 
Maxwell that he was well known in Chicago newspaper circles 
for his wit, his trenchant editorial pen, and that once he had 
been considered the most brilliant newspaper editor in St. 
Louis. He had a small, spare, intellectual wife, very homely 
and very dowdy, who still adored him and had suffered God 
knows what to be permitted to live with him. 

The first afternoon I saw him sitting in the city editorial 
chair I was very much afraid of him and of my future. He 
looked raucous and uncouth, and Maxwell had told me that 
new editors usually brought in new men. As it turned out, 
however, much to my astonishment, he took an almost im- 



74 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

mediate fancy to me which ripened into a kind of fatherly 
affection and even, if you will permit me humbly to state a 
fact, a kind of adoration. Indeed he swelled my head by the 
genial and hearty manner in which almost at once he took 
me under his guidance and furthered my career as rapidly 
as he could, the while he borrowed as much of my small 
salary as he could. Please do not think that I begrudged this 
then or that I do now. I owe him more than a dozen such 
salaries borrowed over a period of years could ever repay. 
My one grief is, that I had so little to give him in return 
for the very great deal he did for me. 

The incident from which this burst of friendship seemed 
to take its rise was this. One day shortly after he arrived 
he gave me a small clipping concerning a girl on the south 
side who had run away or had been kidnaped from one of 
the dreariest homes it has ever been my lot to see. The 
girl was a hardy Irish creature of about sixteen. A neighbor- 
hood street boy had taken her to some wretched dive in South 
Clark Street and seduced her. Her mother, an old, Irish 
Catholic woman whom I found bending over a washtub when 
I called, was greatly exercised as to what had become of her 
daughter, of whom she had heard nothing since her ftisap* 
pearance. The police had been informed, and from clews 
picked up by a detective I learned the facts first mentioned. 
The mother wept into her wash as she told me of the death 
of her husband a few years before, of a boy who had been 
injured in such a way that he could not work, and now this 
girl, her last hope — 

From a newspaper point of view there was nothing much 
to the story, but I decided to follow it to the end. I found 
the house to which the boy had taken the girl, but they had 
just left. I found the parents of the youth, simple, plain 
working people, who knew nothing of his whereabouts. Some- 
thing about the wretched little homes of both families, the 
tumbledown neighborhoods, the poverty and privation which 
would ill become a pretty sensuous girl, impelled me to write 
it out as I saw and felt it. I hurried back to the office that 
afternoon and scribbled out a kind of slum romance, which 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 75 

in the course of the night seemed to take the office by storm. 
Maxwell, who read it, scowled at first, then said it was inter- 
esting, and then fine. 

"Carl," he interpolated at one point as he read, "you're 
letting your youthful romantic mood get the best of you, 
I see. This will never do, Carl. Read Schopenhauer, my boy, 
read Schopenhauer." 

The city editor picked it up when he returned, intending, 
I presume, to see if there was any sign of interest in the 
general introduction ; finding something in it to hold him, he 
read on carefully to the end, as I could see, for I was not a 
dozen feet away and could see what he was reading. "When 
he finished he looked over at me and then called me to come 
to him. 

' ' I want to say to you, ' ' he said, ' ' that you have just done a 
fine piece of writing. I don 't go much on this kind of story, 
don't believe in it as a rule for a daily paper, but the way 
you have handled this is fine. You're young yet, and if 
you just keep yourself well in hand you have a future." 

Thereafter he became very friendly, asked me out one 
lunch-time to have a drink, borrowed a dollar and told me 
of some of the charms and wonders of journalistic work in 
St. Louis and elsewhere. He thought the Globe was too small 
a paper for me, that I ought to get on a larger one, preferably 
in another city, and suggested how valuable would be a period 
of work on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, of which he had 
once been city editor. 

"You haven't any idea how much you need all this," he 
said. "You're young and inexperienced, and a great paper 
like the Globe-Democrat or the New York Sun starts a boy 
off right. I would like to see you go first to St. Louis, and 
then to New York. Don't settle down anywhere yet, don't 
drink, and don't get married, whatever you do. A wife 
will be a big handicap to you. You have a future, and I'm 
going to help you if I can." Then he borrowed another 
dollar and left me. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Taken up by this man in this way and with Maxwell as my 
literary guide and mentor still, I could not help but prosper 
to an extent at this task, and I did. I cannot recall now 
all the things that I was called upon to do, but one of the 
things that shortly after the arrival of McEnnis was assigned 
to me and that eventually brought my Chicago newspaper 
career to a close in a sort of blaze of glory as I saw it, at least, 
was a series of articles or rather a campaign to close a group of 
fake auction shops which were daily fleecing hundreds by sell- 
ing bogus watches, jewelry, diamonds and the like, yet which 
were licensed by the city and from which the police were 
deriving a very handsome revenue. Although so new at this 
work the task was placed in my hands as a regular daily 
assignment by Mr. McEnnis with the comment that I must 
make something out of it, whether or not I thought I could 
put a news punch in it and close these places. That would 
be a real newspaper victory and ought to do me some good 
with my chief the managing editor. Campaigns of this kind 
are undertaken not in a spirit of righteousness as a rule but 
because of public pressure or a wish to increase circulation 
and popularity ; yet in this case no such laudable or excusable 
intent could be alleged. 

This paper was controlled by John B. MacDonald, an Irish 
politician, gambler, racer of horses, and the owner of a string 
of local houses of prostitution, saloons and gambling dens, all 
of which brought him a large income and made him influential 
politically. Recently he had fallen on comparatively difficult 
days. His reputation as a shady character had become too 
widespread. The pharisees and influential men generally who 
had formerly profited by his favor now found it expedient to 
pass by on the other side. Public sentiment against him had 
been aroused by political attacks on the part of one newspaper 

76 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 77 

and another that did not belong to his party. The last elec- 
tion having been lost to him, the police and other departments 
of the city were now supposed to work in harmony to root 
out his vile though profitable vice privileges. 

Everybody knows how these things work. Some adminis- 
tration attacks were made upon his privileges, whereupon, not 
finding suitable support in the papers of his own party in 
the city, they having axes of their own to grind, he had 
started a paper of his own, the Globe. He had brought 
on a capable newspaper man from New York, who was doing 
his best to make of the paper something which would satisfy 
MacDonald's desire for circulation and influence while he 
lined his own pockets against a rainy day. For this reason, 
no doubt, our general staff was underpaid, though fairly ca- 
pable. During my stay the police and other departments, un- 
der the guidance of Republican politicians and newspapers, 
were making an attack on Mr. MacDonald's preserves; to 
which he replied by attacking through the medium of the 
Globe anything and everything he thought would do his 
rivals harm. Among these were a large number of these same 
mock auction shops in the downtown section. Evidently the 
police were deriving a direct revenue from these places, for 
they let them severely alone but since the administration was 
now anti-MacDonald and these were not Mr. MacDonald's 
property nothing was left undone by us to stop this traffic. 
We charged, and it was true, that though victims daily ap- 
peared before the police to complain that they had been swin- 
dled and to ask for restitution, nothing was done by the police. 

I cannot now recall what it was about my treatment of these 
institutions that aroused so much interest in the office and 
made me into a kind of Globe hero. I was innocent of all 
knowledge of the above complications which I have just de- 
scribed when I started, and almost as innocent when I con- 
cluded. Nevertheless now daily at ten in the morning and 
again in the afternoon I went to one or another of these shops, 
listened to the harangue of the noisy barkers, saw tin-gilt 
jewelry knocked down to unsuspecting yokels from the South 
and West who stood open-mouthed watching the hypnotizing 



78 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

movements of the auctioneer's hands as he waved a glistering 
gem or watch in front of them and expatiated on the beauties 
and perfections of the article he was compelled to part from 
for a song. These places were not only deceptions and frauds 
in what they pretended to sell but also gathering-places for 
thieves, pick-pockets, footpads who, finding some deluded by- 
stander to be possessed of a watch, pin or roll of money other 
than that from which he was parted by the auctioneer or his 
associates, either then and there by some legerdemain robbed 
him or followed him into a dark street and knocked him 
down and did the same. At this time Chicago was notori- 
ous for this sort of thing, and it was openly charged in the 
Glob e and elsewhere that the police connived at and thrived 
by the transactions. 

My descriptions of what was going on, innocent and matter 
of fact as they were at first and devoid of guile or make-be- 
lieve, so pleased Mr. McEnnis beyond anything I had previ- 
ously done that he was actually fulsome and yet at the same 
time mandatory and restraining in his compliments. I have no 
desire to praise myself at this time. Such things and so much 
that seemed so important then have since become trivial 
beyond words but it is only fair to state that he was seem- 
ingly immensely pleased and amused as was Maxwell. 

"Upon my word," I once heard him exclaim, as he read one 
of my daily effusions. ' ' The rascals. Who would think that 
such scamps would be allowed to run at large in a city like 
this! They certainly ought to be in jail. Every one of them. 
And the police along with them. ' ' Then he chuckled, slapped 
his knee and finally came over and made some inquiries in 
regard to a certain dealer whom I had chanced to picture. 
I was cautioned against overstating anything ; also against de- 
tection and being beaten up by those whom I was offending. 
For I noticed after the first day or two that the barkers of 
some of the shops occasionally studied me curiously or ceased 
their more shameful effronteries in my presence and pro- 
duced something of more value. The facts which my articles 
presented, however, finally began to attract a little attention 
to the paper. Either because the paper sold better or because 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 79 

this was an excellent club wherewith to belabor his enemies, 
the publisher now decided to call the attention of the public 
via the billboards, to what was going on in our columns, and 
McEnnis himself undertook to frighten the police into action 
by swearing out warrants against the different owners of the 
shops and thus compelling them to take action. 

I became the center of a semi-literary, semi-public reform 
hubbub. The principal members of the staff assured me that 
the articles were forceful in fact and color and highly amus- 
ing. One day, by way of the license bureau and with the aid 
of McEnnis, I secured the names of the alleged owners and 
managers of nearly all of these shops and thereafter attacked 
them by name, describing them just as they were, where they 
lived, how they made their money, etc. In company with a 
private detective and several times with McEnnis, I person- 
ally served warrants of arrest, accompanied the sharpers to 
police headquarters, where they were immediately released 
on bail, and then ran to the office to write out my impressions 
of all I had seen, repeating conversations as nearly as I 
could remember, describing uncouth faces and bodies of 
crooks, policemen and detectives, and by sly innuendo indi- 
cating what a farce and sham was the whole seeming interest 
of the police. 

One day McEnnis and I called on the chief of police, de- 
manding to know why he was so indifferent to our crusade 
and the facts we put before him. To my youthful amazement 
and enlightenment he shook his fist in our faces and exclaimed : 
"You can go to the devil, and so can the Globe! I know 
who's back of this campaign, and why. Well, go on and 
play your little game ! Shout all you want to. Who 's going 
to listen to you? You haven't any circulation. You're not 
going to make a mark of me, and you're not going to get me 
fired out of here for not performing my duty. Your paper 
is only a dirty political rag without any influence." 

"Is it!" taunted McEnnis. "Well, you just wait and see. 
I think you'll change your mind as to that," and we stalked 
solemnly out. 

And in the course of time he did change his mind. Some 



80 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

of the fakers had to be arrested and fined and their places 
closed up, and the longer we talked and exposed the worse 
it became for them. Finally a dealer approached me one 
morning and offered me an eighteen-carat gold watch, to be 
selected by me from any jewelry store in the city and paid 
for by him, if I would let his store alone. I refused. An- 
other, a dark, dusty, most amusing little Jew, offered me a 
diamond pin, insisting upon sticking it in my cravat, and 
said: "Go see! Go see! Ask any jeweler what he thinks, 
if that ain 't a real stone ! If it ain 't — if he says no — bring it 
back to me and I'll give you a hundred dollars in cash for 
it. Don't you mention me no more now. Be a nice young 
feller now. I'm a hard-workin' man just like anybody else. 
I run a honest place." 

I carried the pin back to the office and gave it to McEnnis. 
He stared at me in amazement. 

"Why did you do this?" he exclaimed. "You shouldn't 
have taken this, at all. It may get the paper in trouble. 
They may have had witnesses to this — but maybe not. Per- 
haps this fellow is just trying to protect himself. Anyway, 
we're going to take this thing back to him and don't take 
anything more, do you hear, money or anything. You can't 
do that sort of thing. If I didn't think you were honest I'd 
fire you right now." 

He took me into the office of the editor-in-chief, who looked 
at me with still, gray-blue eyes and listened to my story. 
He dismissed me and talked with McEnnis for a while. When 
the latter came out he exclaimed triumphantly: "He sees 
that you're honest, all right, and he's tickled to death. Now 
we'll take this pin back, and then you'll write out the whole 
story just as it happened. ' ' 

On the way we went to a magistrate to swear out a charge 
of attempted bribery against this man, and later in the same 
day I went with the detective to serve the warrant. To myself 
I seemed to be swimming in a delicious sea of life. "What 
a fine thing life is!" I thought. "Here I am getting along 
famously because I can write. Soon I will get more money, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 81 

and maybe some day people will begin to hear of me. I will 
get a fine reputation in the newspaper world. ' ' 

Thanks to this vigorous campaign, of which McEnnis was 
the inspiration and guiding spirit, all these auction shops were 
eventually closed. In so much at least John B. MacDonald 
had achieved a revenge. 

As for myself, I felt that there must be some serious and 
favorable change impending for me ; and true enough, within 
a fortnight after this the change came. I had noticed that 
McEnnis had become more and more friendly. He introduced 
me to his wife one day when she was in the office and told 
her in my presence what splendid work I was doing. Often he 
would take me to lunch or to a saloon for drinks (for which I 
would pay), and would then borrow a dollar or two or three, 
no part of which he ever returned. He lectured me on the 
subject of study, urging me to give myself a general education 
by reading, attending lectures and the like. He wanted me 
to look into painting, music, sculpture. As he talked the blood 
would swirl in my head, and I kept thinking what a brilliant 
career must be awaiting me. One thing he did was to secure 
me a place on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 

Just at this time a man whose name I have forgotten — 
Leland, I think — the Washington correspondent of the St. 
Louis Globe-Democrat, came to Chicago to report the prelimi- 
nary preparations for the great World's Fair which was to 
open the following spring. Already the construction of a 
number of great buildings in Jackson Park had been begun, 
and the newspapers throughout the country were on the alert 
as to its progress. Leland, as I may as well call him, a cool, 
capable observer and writer, was an old friend of McEnnis. 
McEnnis introduced me to him and made an impassioned plea 
in my behalf for an opportunity for me to do some writing for 
the Globe-Democrat in St. Louis under his direction. The idea 
was to get this man to allow me to do some World's Fair work 
for him, on the side, in addition to my work on the Globe, 
and then later to persuade Joseph B. McCullagh of the former 
paper to make a place for me in St. Louis. 

"As you see," he said when he introduced me, "he's a mere 



82 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

boy without any experience, but he has the makings of a 

first-rate newspaper man. I'm sure of it. Now, Henry, as 

a favor to me, I want you to help him. You're close to 

Mac" (Joseph B. McCullagh, editor-in-chief of the St. Louis 

Globe-Democrat) , "and he's just the man this boy ought to 

go to to get his training. Dreiser has just completed a fine 

piece of journalistic work for me. He's closed up the fake 

auction shops here, and I want to reward him. He only gets 

fifteen a week here, and I can 't do anything for him in Chicago 

just now. You write and ask Mac to take him on down there, 

and I '11 write also and tell him how I feel about it. ' ' 

The upshot of this was that I was immediately taken into 

the favor of Mr. Leland, given some easy gossip writing 

to do, which netted me sixteen dollars the week for three weeks 

in addition to the fifteen I earned on the Globe. At the end 

of that time, some correspondence having ensued between the 

editor of the Globe-Democrat and his two Chicago admirers, I 

one day received a telegram which read : 

"You may have reportorial position on this paper at twenty dollars 
a week, beginning next Monday. Wire reply." 

I stood in the dusty little Globe office and stared at this, 
wondering what so great an opportunity portended. Only 
six months before I had been jobless and hanging about this 
back door; here I was tonight with as much as fifty dollars 
in my pocket, a suit of good clothes on my back, good shoes, 
a good hat and overcoat. I had learned how to write and was 
already classed here as a star reporter. I felt as though life 
were going to do wonderful and beautiful things for me. I 
thought of Alice, that now I should have to leave her and this 
familiar and now comfortable Chicago atmosphere, and then 
I went over to McEnnis to ask him what I ought to do. 

"When he read the telegram he said: "This is the best 
chance that could possibly come to you. You will be working 
on one of the greatest papers and under one of the greatest 
editors that ever lived. Make the most of your chance. Go 1 
Of course go ! Let's see — it's Tuesday ; our regular week ends 
Friday. You hand in your resignation now, to take effect 
then, and go Sunday. I '11 give you some letters that will help 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 83 

you, ' ' and he at once turned to his desk and wrote out a series 
of instructions and recommendations. 

That night, and for four days after, until I took the train 
for St. Louis, I walked on air. I was going away. I was going 
out in the world to make my fortune. Withal I was touched 
by the pathos of the fact that life and youth and everything 
which now glimmered about me so hopefully was, for me as 
well as for every other living individual, insensibly slipping 
away. 



CHAPTER XV 

This sudden decision to terminate my newspaper life in 
Chicago involved the problem of what to do about Alice. Dur- 
ing these spring and summer days I had been amusing myself 
with her, imagining sometimes, because of her pretty face and 
figure and her soft clinging ways, that I was in love with her. 
By the lakes and pagodas of Chicago's parks, on the lake 
shore at Lincoln Park where the white sails were to be seen, 
in Alice's cozy little room with the windows open and the 
lights out, or of a Sunday morning when her parents were 
away visiting and she was preparing my breakfast and flour- 
ing her nose and chin in the attempt — how happy we were! 
How we frivoled and kissed and made promises to ourselves 
concerning the future ! We were like two children at times, 
and for a while I half decided that I would marry her. In a 
little while we were going everywhere together and she 
was planning her wedding trousseau, the little fineries she 
would have when we were married. We were to live on the 
south side near the lake in a tiny apartment. She described to 
me the costume she would wear, which was to be of satin of 
an ivory shade, with laces, veils, slippers and stockings to 
match. 

But as spring wore on and I grew so restless I began to 
think not so much less of Alice as more of myself. I never saw 
her as anything but beautiful, tender, a delicate, almost 
perfect creature for some one to love and cherish. Once we 
went hand-in-hand over the lawns of Jackson Park of a Sun- 
day afternoon. She was enticing in a new white flannel dress 
and dark blue hat. The day was warm and clear and a con- 
voy of swans was sailing grandly about the little lake. We 
sat down and watched them and the ducks, the rowers in 
green, blue and white boats, with the white pagoda in the 

84 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 85 

center of the lake reflected in the water. All was colorful, 

gay. 

"Oh, Dorse," she said at one place, with a little gasping 
sigh which moved me by its pathos, ' ' isn 't it lovely ? ' ' 

"Beautiful." 

' ' We are so happy when we are together, aren 't we ? " 

"Yes." 

' ' Oh, I wish we were married ! If we just had a little place 
of our own ! You could come home to me, and I could make 
you such nice things." 

I promised her happy days to come, but even as I said it 
I knew it would not be. I did not think I could build a life 
on my salary ... I did not know that I wanted to. Life was 
too wide and full. She seemed to sense something of this from 
the very beginning, and clung close to me now as we walked, 
looking up into my eyes, smiling almost sadly. As the hours 
slipped away into dusk and the hush of evening suggested 
change and the end of many things she sighed again. 

"Oh, Dorse," she said as we reached her doorstep, "if we 
could just be together always and never part !" 

"We will be," I said, but I did not believe my own words. 

It was on this spring night that she attempted to persuade 
me, not by words or any great craft but merely by a yielding 
pressure, to take her and make her fully mine. I fancy she 
thought that if she yielded to me physically and found herself 
with child my sympathy would cause me to marry her. We in 
her own home threw some pillows on the floor, and there in my 
arms she kissed and hugged me, begging me to love her; but 
I had not the wish. I did not think that I ought to do that 
thing, then. 

It was after this that the upward turn of my fortunes 
began. I was involved in the mock auction war for over 
three weeks and for two weeks following that with my buzzing 
dreams of leaving Chicago. In this rush of work, and in pay- 
ing some attentions to Miss Winstead, I neglected Alice shame- 
fully, once for ten days, not calling at her house or store 
or writing her a note. One Sunday morning, troubled about 
me and no doubt heartsick, she attended the ethical culture 



86 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

lecture in the Grand Theater, where I often went. On coming 
out she met me and I greeted her affectionately, but she only 
looked at me with sad and reproachful eyes and said: "Oh, 
Dorse, you don't really care any more, do you? You're just 
a little sorry when you see me. Well, you needn't come any 
more. I'm going back to Harry. I'm only too glad that I 
can. ' ' 

She admitted that, misdoubting me, she had never dropped 
him entirely but had kept him calling occasionally. This 
angered me and I said to myself : ' ' What is she that I should 
worry over her?" Imagine. And this double-dealing, essen- 
tial as it was then, cut me to the quick, although I had been 
doing as much and more. When I thought it out I knew that 
she was entitled to protect herself against so uncertain a love 
as mine. Even then I could have taken her — she practically 
asked me to — but I offered reasons and excuses for delay. I 
went away both angry and sad, and the following Sunday, 
having received the telegram from St. Louis, I left without 
notifying her. Indeed I trifled ahout on this score debating 
with myself until Saturday night, when McEnnis asked me to 
go to dinner with him; afterwards when I hurried to her 
home she was not there. This angered me groundlessly, even 
though I knew she never expected me any more of a Saturday 
night. I returned to my room, disconsolate and gloomy, 
packed my belongings and then decided that I would go back 
after midnight and knock at her door. Remembering that my 
train left at seven-thirty next morning and having no doubt 
that she was off with my rival, I decided to punish her. After 
all, I could come back if I wished, or she could come to me. 
I wrote her a note, then went to bed and slept fitfully until 
six-thirty, when I arose and hurried to make my train. In a 
little while I was off, speeding through those wide flat yards 
which lay adjacent to her home, and with my nose pressed 
against the window, a driving rain outside, I could see the very 
windows and steps by which we had so often sat. My heart 
sank and I ached. I decided at once to write her upon my 
arrival in St. Louis and beg her to come — not to become my 
wife perhaps but my mistress. I brooded gloomily all day as 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 87 

I sped southward, picturing myself as a lorn youth without 
money, home, family, love, anything. I tried to be sad, think- 
ing at the same time what wonderful things might not be going 
to befall me. But I was leaving Alice ! I was leaving Chicago, 
my home, all that was familiar and dear! I felt as though 
I could not stand it, as though when I reached St. Louis I 
should take the next train and return. 



CHAPTER XVI 

The time was November, 1892. St. Louis, as I stepped off 
the train that Sunday evening, after leaving Chicago in cold 
dreary state, seemed a warmer clime. The air was soft, almost 
balmy; but St. Louis could be cold enough too, as I soon dis- 
covered. The station, then at Twelfth and Poplar (the 
new Union Station at Eighteenth and Market was then build- 
ing) , an antiquated affair of brick and stone, with the tracks 
stretching in rows in front of it and reached by board walks 
laid at right angles to them, seemed unspeakably shabby and 
inconvenient to me after the better ones of Chicago. St. Louis, 
I said to myself, was not as good as Chicago. Chicago was 
rough, powerful, active ; St. Louis was sleepy and slow. This 
was due, however, to the fact that I entered it of a Sunday 
evening and all its central portion was still. Contrasted with 
Chicago it was not a metropolis at all. While rich and suc- 
cessful it was a creature of another mood and of slower growth. 
I learned in time to like it very much, but for the things 
that set it apart from other cities, not for the things by which 
it sought to rival them. 

But on that evening how dull and commonplace it seemed — 
how slow after the wave-like pulsation of energy that appeared 
to shake the very air of Chicago. 

I made my way to a hotel called The Silver Moon, recom- 
mended to me by my mentor and sponsor, where one could 
get a room for a dollar, a meal for twenty -five cents. Outside 
of Joseph B. McCullagh, editor of the Globe-Democrat, and 
Edmond O'Neill, former editor of the Republic to whom I 
bore a letter, there was no one to whom I might commend my- 
self. I did not care. I was in a strange city at last ! I was 
out in the world now really, away from my family. My great 
interest was in life as a spectacle, this singing, rhythmic, mys- 
tic state in which I found myself. Life, the great sea ! Life, 
the wondrous, colorful riddle ! 

88 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 89 

After eating a bite in the almost darkened restaurant of 
this hotel I at once went out into Pine Street and stared at 
the street-cars, yellow, red, orange, green, brown, labeled 
Choteau Avenue, Tower Grove, Jefferson Avenue, Carondelet. 
My first business was to find the Globe-Democrat building, a 
prosperous eight-story brownstone and brick affair standing 
at Sixth and Pine. I stared at this building in the night, look- 
ing through the great plate glass windows at an onyx-lined 
office, and finally went in and bought a Sunday paper. 

I went to my room and studied this paper — then slept, 
thinking of my coming introduction in the morning. I was 
awakened by the clangor of countless cars. Going to the sta- 
tionary washstand I was struck at once by the yellowness of 
the water, a dark yellowish-brown, which deposited a yellow 
sediment in the glass. "Was that the best St. Louis could 
afford? I asked myself in youthful derision. I drank it just 
the same, went down to breakfast and then out into the city 
to see what I should see. I bought a Globe-Democrat (a 
Republican party paper, by the way : an anachronism of age 
and change of ownership) and a Republic, the one morning 
Democratic paper, and then walked to Sixth and Pine to have 
another look at the building in which I was to work. I wan- 
dered along Broadway and Fourth Street, the street of the 
old courthouse; sought out the Mississippi River and stared 
at it, that vast river lying between banks of yellow mud ; then 
I went back to the office of the Globe-Democrat, for it was 
nearing the time when its editor-in-chief might choose to put 
in an appearance. 

Joseph B. McCullagh ("Little Mac" of Eugene Field's 
verse) was a short, thick, aggressive, rather pugnacious and 
defensive person of Irish extraction. He was short, sturdy, 
Napoleonic, ursine rather than leonine. I was instantly drawn 
and thrown back by his stiff reserve. A negro elevator boy 
had waved me along a marble hall on the seventh floor to a 
room at the end, where I was met by an office boy who took 
in my name and then ushered me into the great man's pres- 
ence. I found him at a roll-top desk in a minute office, and he 
was almost buried in discarded newspapers. I learned after- 



90 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

ward that lie would never allow these to be removed until he 
was all but crowded out. I was racked with nervousness. 
Whatever high estimate I had conceived of myself had oozed 
out by the time I reached his door. I was now surveyed by 
keen gray Irish eyes from under bushy brows. 

"Urn, yuss! Um, yuss!" was all he deigned to say. "See 
Mr. Mitchell in the city-room, Mr. Mitchell — um, yuss. Your 
salary will be — um — um — twenty dollars to begin with" (he 
was chewing a cigar and mumbled his words), and he turned 
to his papers. 

Not a word, not a sign, that he knew I had ever written a 
line worth while. I returned to the handsome city-room, and 
found only empty desks. I sat down and waited fully three- 
quarters of an hour, examining old papers and staring out of 
the windows over the roofs until Mr. Mitchell appeared. 

Like his employer, he was thick-set, a bigger man physically 
but less attractive. He had a round, closely-cropped head and 
a severe and scowling expression. He reminded me of Squeers 
in Nicholas Nickleby. A savage fat man — can anything be 
worse? He went to his desk with a quick stride when he 
entered, never noticing me. When I approached and ex- 
plained who I was and why I was there he scarcely gave me a 
glance. 

"The afternoon assignments won't be ready till twelve- 
thirty," he commented drily. "Better take a seat in the 
next room. ' ' 

It was then only eleven-thirty, and I went into the next room 
and waited. It was empty but deliciously warm on this chilly 
day. How different from McEnnis, I thought. Evidently 
being called to a newspaper by telegram was not to be in- 
terpreted as auguring that one was to lie on a bed of roses. 

A little bit afraid to leave for this hour, in case he might 
call, I hung about the two windows of this room staring at 
the new city. How wonderful it seemed, now this morning, 
after the quiet of the night before, how strong and forceful 
in this November air. The streets and sky were full of smoke ; 
there was a clangor of street-car gongs below and the rumble 
of endless trucks. A block or two away loomed up a tall 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 91 

building of the newer order, twelve stories at least. Most of 
the buildings were small, old family dwellings turned into 
stores. I wondered about the life of the city, its charms, its 
prospects. What did it hold for me ? How long would I re- 
main here? Would this paper afford me any real advance- 
ment ? Could I make a great impression and rise ? 

As I was thus meditating several newspaper men came in. 
One was a short bustling fellow with a golden-brown mus- 
tache and a shock of curly brown hair, whose name I subse- 
quently learned was Hazard — a fitting name for a newspaper 
reporter. He wore a fedora hat, a short cream-colored over- 
coat which had many wrinkles about the skirts in the back, 
and striped trousers. He came in with a brisk air, slightly 
skipping his feet as he walked, and took a desk, which was 
nothing more than a segment of one long desk fastened to the 
wall and divided by varnished partitions of light oak. As soon 
as he was seated he opened a drawer and took out a pipe, 
which he briskly filled and lighted, and then began to examine 
some papers he had in his pockets. I liked his looks. 

There sauntered in next a pale creature in a steel-gray suit 
of not too new a look, who took a seat directly opposite the 
first comer. His left hand, in a brown glove, hung at his side ; 
apparently it was of wood or stuffed leather. Later there ar- 
rived a negro of very intellectual bearing, who took a seat next 
the second arrival ; then a stout, phlegmatic-looking man with 
dark eyes, dark hair and skin, which gave me a feeling of 
something saturnine in his disposition. The next arrival 
was a small skippity man, bustling about like a little mouse, 
and having somewhat of a mousy look in his eyes, who seemed 
to be attached to the main city editorial room in some ca- 
pacity. 

A curious company gradually filed in, fourteen or fifteen 
all told. I gave up trying to catalogue them and turned to 
look out the window. The little bustling creature came 
through the room several times, looked at me without deigning 
to speak however, and finally put his head in at the door and 
whispered to the attendant group : ' ' The book's ready. ' ' At 
this there was an immediate stir, nearly all of the men got 



92 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

up and one by one they filed into the next room. Assuming 
that they were going to consult the assignment book, I fol- 
lowed, but my name was not down. In Chicago my city 
editor usually called each individual to him in person; here 
each man was supposed to discover his assignment from a 
written page. I returned to the reporters ' room when I found 
my name was not down, wondering what I should be used 
for. 

The others were not long gone before I was sought by the 
mouse — Hugh Keller Hartung by name — who whispered: 
"The city editor wants to see you"; and then for the second 
time I faced this gloomy man, whom I had already begun not 
only to dislike but to fear. He was dark and savage, in his 
mood to me at least, whether unconsciously so or not I do not 
know. His broad face, set with a straight full nose and a 
wide thin-lipped mouth, gave him a frozen Cromwellian out- 
line. He seemed a. queer, unliterary type to be attached to 
so remarkable a journalist as MeCullagh. 

"There's been some trouble down at this number," he said, 
handing me a slip of paper on which an address was written. 
"A fight, I think. See if you can find out anything about 
it." 

I hurried out, immensely relieved to get into the fresh air 
of the city. I finally made my way to the place, only to find 
a vacant lot. Thinking there might be some mistake, I went 
to the nearest police station and inquired. Nothing was 
known. Fearing to fall down on my first assignment, I re- 
turned to the lot, but could learn nothing. Gradually it began 
to dawn upon me that this might be merely a trial assignment, 
a bright idea of the frowning fat man, a bearings-finder. I 
had already conceived a vast contempt for him, a stumbling- 
block in my path, I thought. No wonder he came to hate me, 
as I learned afterward he did. 

I wandered back through the city, looking at the strange 
little low houses (it was the region between the river and 
North Broadway, about a mile above the courthouse), and 
marveling at the darksome character of the stores. Never in 
my life had I seen such old buildings, all brick and all 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 93 

crowded together, with solid wood or iron shutters, modeled 
after those of France from whence its original settlers came 
and having something of the dourness of the poorer quar- 
ters of Paris about them, and windows composed of very 
small panes of glass, evidences of the influence of France, I 
am sure. Their interiors seemed so dark, so redolent of an 
old-time life. The streets also appeared old-fashioned with 
their cobblestones, their twists and turns and the very little 
space that lay between the curbs. I felt as though the people 
must be different from those in Chicago, less dynamic, less 
aggressive. 

When I reached the office I found that the city editor, Mr. 
Mitchell, had gone. The little mousy individual was at one 
of the parti-divisions of the wall desk, near Mr. Mitchell 's big 
one, diving into a mass of copy the while he scratched his ear 
or trifled with his pencil or jumped mousily about in his 
seat. 

"Is Mr. Mitchell about?" I inquired. 

"No," replied the other briskly; "he never gets in much 
before four o'clock. Anything you want to know? I'm his 
assistant. ' ' 

He did not dare say "assistant city editor"; his superior 
would not have tolerated one. 

' ' He sent me out to this place, but it 's only a vacant lot. ' ' 

"Did you look all around the neighborhood? Sometimes 
you can get news of these things in the neighborhood, you 
know, when you can't get it right at the spot. I often do 
that." 

"Yes," I answered. "I inquired all about there." 

' ' It would be just like Tobe to send you out there, though, ' ' 
he went on feverishly and timidly, "just to break you in. 
He does things like that. You're the new man from Chicago, 
aren't you — Dreiser?" 

' ' Yes, but how did you know ? ' ' 

"He said you were coming," he replied, jerking his left 
thumb over his shoulder. ' ' My name 5 s Hartung, Hugh Keller 
Hartung. ' ' 

He was so respectful, almost fearsome in his references 



94 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to his superior that I could not help smiling. Now that I had 
my bearings, I did not feel so keenly about Mr. Mitchell. He 
seemed dull. 

"I suppose you'll find St. Louis a little slower than Chi- 
cago," he went on, "but we have some of the biggest news- 
paper stories here you ever saw. You remember the Preller 
Trunk Mystery, don 't you, and that big Missouri-Pacific train 
robbery last year?" 

I recalled both distinctly. "Is that so?" I commented, 
thinking of my career in Chicago and hoping for a duplica- 
tion of it here. 

Heavy steps were heard in the hall just outside, and Mr. 
Hartung jumped to his work like a frightened mouse ; on the 
instant his head was fairly pulled down between his shoulders 
and his nose pressed over his work. He seemed to shrivel 
and shrink, and I wondered why. I went into the next room 
just as Mr. Tobias Mitchell entered. When I explained that 
the address he had given me was a vacant lot he merely 
looked up at me quizzically, suspiciously. 

' ' Couldn 't find it, eh ? Somebody must have given me the 
wrong tip. Wait in the next room. I'll call you when I 
want you. ' ' 

I returned to that empty room, from which I could hear the 
industrious pencil of Mr. Hartung and the occasional throat- 
clearing cough of Mr. Mitchell brooding among his papers. 



CHAPTER XVII 

This reporters' room, for all its handsome furnishings, 
never took on an agreeable atmosphere to me; it was too 
gloomy — and solely because of the personality next door. The 
room was empty when I entered, but in a short while an old 
drunken railroad reporter with a red nose came in and sat 
down in a corner seat, taking no notice of me. I read the 
morning paper and waited. The room gradually filled up, and 
all went at once to their desks and began to write industri- 
ously. I felt very much out of tune ; a reporter 's duty at this 
hour of the night was to write. 

However, I made the best of my time reading, and finally 
went out to supper alone, returning as quickly as possible 
in case there should be an assignment for me. When I re- 
turned I found my name on the book and I set out to inter- 
view a Chicago minister who was visiting in the city. Evi- 
dently this city editor thought it would be easier for me to 
interview a Chicago minister than any other. I found my 
man, after some knocking at wrong doors, and got nothing 
worth a stick — mere religious drive — and returned with my 
' ' story, ' ' which was never used. 

While I was writing it up, however, the youth of the Jovian 
curls returned from an assignment, hung up his little wrinkled 
overcoat and sat down in great comfort next me. His eve- 
ning's work was apparently futile for he took out his pipe, 
rapped it sonorously on his chair, lighted it and then picked 
up an evening paper. 

"What's doing, Jock, up at police headquarters?" called 
the little man over his shoulder. 

"Nothing much, Bob," replied the other, without looking 
up. 

"By jing, you police reporters have a cinch!" jested the 
first. "All you do is sit around up there at headquarters 



96 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and get the news off the police blotters, while we poor devils 
are chasing all over town. We have to earn our money." 
His voice had a peculiarly healthy, gay and bantering ring 
to it. 

"That's no joke," put in a long, lean, spectacled individual 
who was sitting in another corner. "I've been tramping all 
over south St. Louis, looking for a confounded robbery story." 

"Well, you've got long legs, Benson," retorted the jovial 
Hazard. "You can stand it. Now I'm not so well fixed that 
way. Bellairs, there, ought to be given a chance at that. 
He wouldn't be getting so fat, by jing!" 

The one called Jock also answered to the name of Bellairs. 

"You people don't do so much," he replied, grinning 
cheerfully. "If you had my job you wouldn't be sitting 
here reading a newspaper. It takes work to be a police re- 
porter. ' ' 

' ' Is that so ? " queried the little man banteringly. ' ' You 're 
proof of it, I suppose ? Why, you never did a good day 's work 
in your life ! ' ' 

"Give us a match, Bob, and shut up," grinned the other. 
"You're too noisy. I've got a lot of work ahead of me yet 
tonight. ' ' 

"I got your work! Is she over sixteen? Wish I had 
your job." 

Jock folded up some copy paper and put it into his pocket 
and walked into the next room, where the little assistant was 
toiling away over the night's grist of news. 

I still sat there, looking curiously on. 

"It's pretty tough," said the spirited Hazard, turning to 
me, "to go out on an assignment and then get nothing. I'd 
rather work hard over a good story any day, wouldn 't you ? ' ' 

' ' That 's the way I feel about it, " I replied. ' ' It 's not much 
fun, sitting around. By the way, do you know whose desk this 
is ? I 've been sitting at it all evening. ' ' 

"It doesn't belong to anybody at present. You might as 
well take it if you like it. There's a vacant one over there 
next to Benson's, if you like that better." He waved toward 
the tall awkward scribe in the corner. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 97 

"This is good enough," I replied. 

"Take your choice. There's no trouble about desks just 
now. The staff's way down anyhow. You're a stranger here, 
aren't you?" 

' ' Yes ; I only came down from Chicago yesterday. ' ' 

"What paper 'd jeh work on up there?" 

"The Globe and News," I answered, lying about the latter 
in order to give myself a better standing than otherwise I 
might have. 

"They're good papers, aren't they?" 

"Yes, pretty fair. The News has the largest evening circu- 
lation. ' ' 

"We have some good papers here too. This is one of the 
biggest. The Past-Dispatch is pretty good too ; it 's the biggest 
evening paper. ' ' 

"Do you know how much circulation this paper has?" I 
inquired. 

"Oh, about fifty thousand, I should say. That's not so 
much, compared to Chicago circulation, but it's pretty big 
for down here. We have the biggest circulation of any paper 
in the Southwest. McCullagh's one of the greatest editors in 
this country, outside of Dana in New York, the greatest of any. 
If McCullagh were in New York he 'd be bigger than he is, by 
jing!" 

"Do you run many big news stories?" 

"Sometimes; not often. The Globe goes very light on local 
news. They play up the telegraph on this paper because we 
go into Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana and all these other 
States around here. We use $400,000 worth of telegraph news 
here every year, ' ' and he said it as though he were part owner 
of the paper. I liked him very much. 

I opened my eyes at this news and thought dubiously of it 
in relation to my own work. It did not promise much for a big 
feature, on which I might spread myself. 

We talked on, becoming more and more friendly. In spite 
of the city editor, whom I did not like, I now began to like this 
place, although I could feel that these men were more or less 
browbeaten, held down and frozen. The room was much too 



98 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

quiet for a healthy Western reportorial room, the atmosphere 
too chill. 

We talked of St. Louis, its size (450,000), its principal 
hotels, the Southern, the Lindell and the La Clede (I learned 
that its oldest and best, the Planter, had recently been torn 
down and was going to be rebuilt some day), what were the 
chief lines of news. It seemed that fires, murders, defalcations, 
scandals were here as elsewhere the great things, far over- 
shadowing most things of national and international import. 
Recently a tremendous defalcation had occurred, and this new 
acquaintance of mine had been working on it, had "handled 
it alone, " as he said. Like all citizens of an American city he 
was pro- St. Louis, anxious to say a good word for it. The 
finest portion of it, he told me, was in the west end. I should 
see the wonderful new residences and places. There was a 
great park here, Forrest, over fourteen hundred acres in size, 
a wonderful thing. A new bridge was building in north St. 
Louis and would soon be completed, one that would relieve 
traffic on the Eads Bridge and help St. Louis to grow. There 
was a small city over the river in Illinois, East St. Louis, and 
a great Terminal Railroad Association which controlled all the 
local railroad facilities and taxed each trunk line six dollars 
a car to enter and each passenger twenty-five cents. "It's a 
great graft and a damned shame, but what can you do ? " was 
his comment. Traffic on the Mississippi was not so much now, 
owing to the railroads that paralleled it, but still it was inter- 
esting. 

The already familiar noise of a roll-top desk broke in upon 
us from the next room, and I noticed a hush fall on the room. 
What an atmosphere! I thought. After a few moments of 
silence my new friend turned to me and whispered very softly : 

"That's Tobe Mitchell, the city editor, coming in. He's a 

proper , as you'll find." He smiled wisely and began 

scribbling again. 

"He didn't look so pleasant to me," 1 replied as softly. 

" I 've quit here twice, ' ' he whispered. ' ' The next time I go 
I won't come back. I don't have to stay here, and he knows it. 
I can get a job any day on the Chronicle, and wouldn't have to 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 99 

work so hard either. That's an evening paper. I stay here 
because I like a morning paper better, that's all. There's more 
to it. Everything's so scrappy and kicked together on an eve- 
ning paper. But he doesn't say much to me any more, 
although he doesn't like me. You'd think we were a lot of 
kids, and this place a schoolroom. ' ' He frowned. 

We dropped into silence again. I did not like this thought 
of difficulty thrust upon me. What a pity a man like McEn- 
nis was not here! 

' ' He doesn 't look like much of a newspaper man to me, ' ' I 
observed. 

"And he isn't either. McCullagh has him here because he 
saved his life once in a fight somewhere, down in Texas, I think 
— or that's what they tell me." 

We sat and read ; the sound of city life below had died out 
and one could hear the scratching of reporters' pens. Assign- 
ments were written up and turned in, and then the reporters 
idled about, dangling their legs from spring-back chairs, smok- 
ing pipes and whispering. As the clock registered eleven- 
thirty the round body of Mitchell appeared in the doorway, 
his fair-tinted visage darkened by a faint scowl. 

"You boys can go now," he pronounced solemnly. 

All arose, I among them, and went to a closet where were our 
hats and overcoats. I was tired, and this atmosphere had 
depressed me. What a life ! Had I come down here for this? 
The thought of the small news end which the local life re- 
ceived depressed me also. I could not see how I was to make 
out. 

I went down to a rear elevator, the only one running at this 
time of night, and came out into the dark street, where a car- 
riage was waiting. I assumed that this must be for the 
famous editor. It looked so comfortable and sedate, waiting 
at the door in the darkness for an editor who, as I later 
learned, might not choose to leave until two. I went on to my 
little room at the hotel, filled with ideas of how, some day, I 
should be a great editor and have a carriage waiting for me. 
Yes ; I felt that I was destined for a great end. For the present 
I must be content to look around for a modest room where I 
could sleep and bide my time and opportunity. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

I found a room the next morning in Pine Street, only a few 
doors from this hotel and a block from my new office. It was 
a hall bedroom, one of a long series which I was to occupy, 
dirty and grimy. I recall it still with a sickening sense of its 
ugliness; and yet its cheapness and griminess did not then 
trouble me so much. Did I not have the inestimable boon of 
youth and ambition, which make most material details unim- 
portant ? Some drab of a woman rented it to me, and outside 
were those red, yellow, blue, green and orange street-cars 
clanging and roaring and wheezing by all night long. Inside 
were four narrow gray walls, a small wooden bed, none too 
clean sheets and pillow-cases, a yellow washstand. I brought 
over my bag, arranged the few things I thought need not be 
kept under lock and key, and returned to the streets. I need 
not bother about the office until twelve-thirty, when the assign- 
ments were handed out — or "the book," as Hartung rev- 
erently called it, was laid out for our inspection. 

And now, spread before me for my survey and entertain- 
ment was the great city of St. Louis, and life itself as it was 
manifesting itself to me through this city. This was the most 
important and interesting thing to me, not my new position. 
"Work? Well, that was important enough, considering the 
difficulty I had had in securing it. What was more, I was 
always driven by the haunting fear of losing this or any other 
position I had ever had, of not being able to find another (a 
left-over fear, perhaps, due to the impression that poverty had 
made on me in my extreme youth). Just the same, the city 
came first in my imagination and desires, and I now began to 
examine it with care, its principal streets, shops, hotels, its 
residence district. What a pleasure to walk about, to stare, to 
dream of better days and great things to come. 

Just at this time St. Louis seemed to be upon the verge of 

100 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 101 

change and improvement. An old section of mansions border- 
ing on the business center was rapidly giving way to a rabble 
of small stores and cheap factories. Already several new 
buildings of the Chicago style of skyscraper were either con- 
templated or in process of construction. There was a new 
club, the Mercantile, the largest in the city, composed entirely 
of merchants in the downtown section, which had just been 
opened and about which the papers were making a great stir. 
There was a new depot contracted for, one of the finest in all 
the country, so I was told, which was to house all the roads 
entering the city. A new city hall was being talked of, an 
enormous thing-to-be. Out in the west end, where progress 
seemed the most vital, were new streets and truly magnificent 
residence ' ' places, ' ' parked and guarded areas these, in which 
were ranged many residences of the ultra-rich. The first time 
I saw one of these places I was staggered by its exclusive air 
and the beauty and even grandeur of some of the great houses 
in it — newly manufactured exclusiveness. Here were great 
gray or white or brownstone affairs, bright, almost gaudy, 
with great verandas, astonishing doorways, flights of stone 
steps, heavily and richly draped windows, immense carriage- 
houses, parked and flowered lawns. 

By degrees I came to know the trade and poor sections of 
the city. Here were long throbbing wholesale streets, 
crowded with successful companies; along the waterfront 
was a mill area backed up by wretched tenements, as poor 
and grimy and dingy as any I have ever seen; elsewhere 
were long streets of middle-class families, all alike, all with 
white stone doorsteps or windowsills and tiny front yards. 

The atmosphere of the Globe-Democrat after a time came to 
have a peculiar appeal for me because it was dominated so 
completely by the robust personality of McCullagh. He was 
so natural, unaffected, rugged. As time passed he steadily 
grew in my estimation and by degrees, as I read his paper, 
his powerful, brilliant editorials, and saw how systematically 
and forcefully he managed all things in connection with him- 
self and his men, the very air of St. Louis became redolent of 
him. He was a real force, a great man. So famous was he 



102 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

already that men came to St. Louis from the Southwest and 
elsewhere just to see him and his office. I often think of him 
in that small office, sitting waist-deep among his papers, his 
heavy head sunk on his pouter -like chest, his feet incased in 
white socks and low slipper-like shoes, his whole air one of 
complete mental and physical absorption in his work. A 
few years later he committed suicide, out of sheer weariness, 
I assume, tired of an inane world. Yet it was not until long 
after, when I was much better able to judge him and his 
achievements, that I understood what a really big thing 
he had done: built up a journal of national and even inter- 
national significance in a region which, one would have sup- 
posed, could never have supported anything more than a 
mediocre panderer to trade interests. As Hazard had proudly 
informed me, the annual bill for telegraph news alone was 
$400,000 : a sum which, in the light of subsequent journalistic 
achievements in America, may seem insignificant but which 
at that time meant a great deal. He seemed to have a desire 
to make the paper not only good (as that word is used in 
connection with newspapers) but great, and from my own 
memory and impression I can testify that it was both. It 
had catholicity and solidity in editorials and news. The 
whole of Europe, as well as America, was combed and re- 
flected in order that his readers might be entertained and 
retained, and each day one could read news of curious as 
well as of scientific interest from all over the world. Its 
editorials were in the main wise and jovial, often beautifully 
written by McCullagh himself. Of assumed Republican tend- 
encies, it was much more a party leader than follower, both 
in national and in State affairs. The rawest of raw youths, 
I barely sensed this at the time, and yet I felt something of 
the wonder and beauty of it all. I knew him to be a great man 
because I could feel it. There was something of dignity and 
force about all that was connected with him. Later it became 
a fact of some importance to me that I had been called to a 
paper of so much true worth, by a man so wise, so truly able. 
The only inharmonious note at this time was my intense 
loneliness. In Chicago, in spite of the gradual breaking up of 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 103 

our home and the disintegration of the family, I had managed 
to build up that spiritual or imaginative support which comes 
to all of us from familiarity with material objects. I had 
known Chicago, its newspaper world, its various sections, its 
places of amusement, some dozen or two of newspaper men. 
Here I knew no one at all. 

And back in Chicago there had been Alice and N and 

K , whereas here whom had I? Alice was a living pain 

for years, for in my erratic way I was really fond of her. I 
am of that peculiar disposition, which will not let memories of 
old ties and old pleasures die easily. I suffer for things which 
might not give another a single ache or pain. Alice came 
very close to me, and now she was gone. "Without any reason- 
able complaint, save that I was slightly weary, did not care 
for her as much as I had, and that my mind was full of the 
world outside and my future, I had left her. It had not been 
more than four weeks since I had visited her in her little par- 
lor in Chicago, sipping of those delights which only youth and 
ecstatic imagination can conjure; now I was three hundred 
miles away from her kisses and the warmth of her hands. At 
the same time there was this devil or angel of ambition which 
quite in spite of myself was sweeping me onward. I fancied 
some vast Napoleonic ending for myself, which of course was 
moonshine. I could not have gone back to Chicago then if 
I had wished; it was not spiritually possible. Something 
within kept saying "On — on!" Besides, it would have done 
no good. The reaction would have been more irritating 
than the pain it satisfied. As it was, I could only walk about 
the city in this chilling November weather and speculate about 

myself and Alice and N and K and my own future. 

What an odd beginning, I often thought to myself. Scandal- 
ous, perhaps, in one so young: three girls in as many years, 
two of them deeply and seriously wounded by me. 

"I shall write to her," I thought. "I will ask her to come 
down here. I can't stand this. She is too lovely and precious 
to me. It is cruel to leave her so." 

There is this to be said for me in regard to my not writing 
to her : I was uncertain as to the financial practicability of it. 



104 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

In Chicago I had been telling her of my excellent position, 
boasting that I was making more than I really was. So long as 
I was there and not married the pretense could easily be sus- 
tained. Here, three hundred miles away, where she would and 
could not come unless I was prepared to support her, it was a 
different matter. To ask her now meant a financial burden 
which I did not feel able, or at least willing, to assume. No 
doubt I could have starved her on twenty dollars a week; 
had I been desperately swayed by love I would have done so. 
I could even have had her, had I so chosen, on conditions which 
did not involve marriage ; but I could not bring myself to do 
this. I did not think it quite fair. I felt that she would have 
a just claim to my continuing the relation with her. . . . And 
outside was the wide world. I told myself that I would marry 
her if I had money. If she had not been of a soft yielding type 
she could easily have entrapped me, but she had not chosen to 
do so. Anyhow, here I was, and here I stayed, meditating on 
the tragedy of it all. 

By this time of course it is quite obvious that I was not an 
ethically correct and moral youth, but a sentimental boy of 
considerable range of feeling who, facing the confusing evi- 
dences of life, was not prepared to accept anything as final. I 
did not know then whether I believed that the morality and 
right conduct preached by the teachers of the world were im- 
portant or not. The religious and social aphorisms of the day 
had been impressed upon me, but they did not stick. Some- 
thing whispered to me that apart from theory there was an- 
other way which the world took and which had little in com- 
mon with the strait and narrow path of the doctrinaires. 
Not all men swindle in little things, or lie or cheat, but how 
few fail to compromise in big ones. Perhaps I would not have 
deliberately lied about anything, at least not in important mat- 
ters, and I would not now under ordinary circumstances after 
the one experience in Chicago have stolen. Beyond this I 
could not have said how I would have acted under given cir- 
cumstances. Women were not included in my moral specula- 
tions as among those who were to receive strict justice — not 
pretty women. In that, perhaps, I was right : they did not 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 105 

always wish it. I was anxious to meet with many of them, as 
many as I might, and I would have conducted myself as joy- 
ously as their own consciences would permit. That I was to be 
in any way punished for this, or that the world would severely 
censure me for it, I did not yet believe. Other boys did it; 
they were constantly talking about it. The world — the world 
of youth at least — seemed to be concerned with libertinage. 
Why should not I be? 



CHAPTER XIX 

No picture of these my opening days in St. Louis would be 
of the slightest import if I could not give a fairly satisfactory 
portrait of myself and of the blood-moods or so-called spiritual 
aspirations which were animating me. At that time I had 
already attained my full height, six feet one-and-one-half 
inches, and weighed only one hundred and thirty-seven 
pounds, so you can imagine my figure. Aside from one eye 
(the right) which was turned slightly outward from the line 
of vision, and a set of upper teeth which because of their ex- 
ceptional size were crowded and so stood out too much, I had 
no particular blemish except a general homeliness of feature. 
It was a source of worry to me all the time, because I imag- 
ined that it kept me from being interesting to women ; which., 
apparently, was not true — not to all women at least. 

Spiritually I was what might be called a poetic melan- 
choliac, crossed with a vivid materialistic lust of life. I doubt 
if any human being, however poetic or however material, ever 
looked upon the scenes of this world, material or spiritual, so 
called, with a more covetous eye. My body was blazing with 
sex, as well as with a desire for material and social supremacy 
— to have wealth, to be in society — and yet I was too cowardly 
to make my way with women readily ; rather, they made their 
way with me. Love of beauty as such — feminine beauty first 
and foremost, of course — was the dominating characteristic of 
all my moods : joy in the arch of an eyebrow, the color of an 
eye, the flame of a lip or cheek, the romance of a situation, 
spring, trees, flowers, evening walks, the moon, the roundness 
of an arm or a hip, the delicate turn of an ankle or a foot, 
spring odors, moonlight under trees, a lighted lamp over a 
dark lawn — what tortures have I not endured because of 
these! My mind was riveted on what love could bring me, 
once I had the prosperity and fame which somehow I foolishly 

106 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 107 

fancied commanded love ; and at the same time I was horribly 
depressed by the thought that I should never have them, 
never ; and that thought, for the most part, has been fulfilled. 
y/ln addition to this I was filled with an intense sympathy for 
the woes of others, life in all its helpless degradation and 
poverty, the unsatisfied dreams of people, their sweaty labors, 
the things they were compelled to endure — nameless imposi- 
tions, curses, brutalities — the things they would never have, 
their hungers, thirsts, half-formed dreams of pleasure, their 
gibbering insanities and beaten resignations at the end. I 
have sobbed dry sobs looking into what I deemed to be broken 
faces and the eyes of human failures. A shabby tumbledown 
district or doorway, a drunken woman being arraigned before 
a magistrate, a child dying in a hospital, a man or woman 
injured in an accident — the times unbidden tears have leaped 
to my eyes and my throat has become parched and painful 
over scenes of the streets, the hospitals, the jails! I have cried 
so often that I have felt myself to be a weakling ; at other times 
I have been proud of them and of my great rages against fate 
and the blundering, inept cruelty of life. If there is a God, 
conscious and personal, and He considers the state of man and 
the savagery of His laws and His indifferences, how He must 
smile at little insect man 's estimate of Him ! It is so flatter- 
ing, so fatuously unreasoning, that only a sardonic devil could 
enjoy it\ 

I walfhappy enough in my work although at times despon- 
dent lest all the pleasures that can come to youth from health, 
courage, wealth and opportunity should fail me while I was 
working and trying to get somewhere. I had health yet I 
imagined I had not because I was not a Sandow, an athlete, 
and my stomach, due to an undiscovered appendix, gave me 
some trouble. As to courage, when I examined myself in that 
direction I fancied that I had none at all. Would I slip out 
if a dangerous brawl were brewing anywhere? Certainly. 
Well, then, I was a coward. Could I stand up and defend 
myself against a man of my own height and weight? I 
doubted it, particularly if he were well-trained. In conse- 
quence, I was again a coward. There was no hope for me 



108 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

among decently courageous men. Could I play tennis, base- 
ball, football? No; not successfully. Assuredly I was a 
weakling of the worst kind. Nearly everybody could do those 
things, and nearly all youths were far more proficient in all 
the niceties of life than was I : manners, dancing, knowledge 
of dress and occasions. Hence I was a fool. The dullest ath- 
lete of the least proficiency could overcome me; the most 
minute society man, if socially correct, was infinitely my 
superior. Hence what had I to hope for ? And when it came 
to wealth and opportunity, how poor I seemed! No girl of 
real beauty and force would have anything to do with a man 
who was not a success ; and so there I was, a complete failure 
to begin with. 

The aches and pains that went with all this, the amazing 
depression, all but suicidal. How often have I looked into 
comfortable homes and wished that some kindly family would 
give me shelter! And yet half knowing that had it been 
offered I would have refused it. How often have I looked 
through the windows of some successful business firm and 
wished I had achieved ownership or stewardship, a position 
similar to that of any of the officers and managers inside! 
To be president or vice-president or secretary of something, 
some great thrashing business of some kind. Great God, how 
sublime it seemed! And yet if I had only known how cen- 
trally controlling the tool of journalism could be made! It 
mattered not then that I was doing fairly well, that most of 
my employers had been friendly and solicitous as to my wel- 
fare, that the few girls I had approached had responded freely 
enough — still I was a failure. 

I rapidly became familiar with the city news department of 
the Globe-Democrat. Its needs, aside from great emergencies, 
were simple enough : interviews, the doings of conventions of 
various kinds (wholesale grocers, wholesale hardware men, 
wholesale druggists), the plans of city politicians when those 
could be discovered, the news of the courts, jails, city hospi- 
tals, police courts, the deaths of well-known people, the goings- 
on in society, special functions of one kind and another, fires, 
robberies, defalcations. For the first few weeks nothing of im- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 109 

portance happened. I was given the task evenings of looking 
in at the North Seventh Street police station, a slow district, 
to see if anything had happened, and was naturally able to 
add to my depression by contemplating the life about there. 
Again, I attended various churches to hear sermons, inter- 
viewed the Irish boss of the city, Edward Butler, an amazing 
person with a head like that of a gnome or ogre, who immedi- 
ately took a great fancy to me and wanted me to come and 
see him again (which I did once). 

He has always stuck in my mind as one of the odd experi- 
ences of my life. He lived in a small red brick family dwell- 
ing just beyond the prostitution area of St. Louis, which 
stretched out along Chestnut Street between Twelfth and 
Twenty-second, and was the city's sole garbage contractor 
(out of which he was supposed to have made countless thou- 
sands) as well as one of its principal horse-shoers, having 
many blacksmithing shops, and was incidentally its Demo- 
cratic or Republican boss, I forget which, a position he 
retained until his death. 

I first saw him at a political meeting during my first few 
weeks in St. Louis, and the manner in which he arose, the way 
in which he addressed his hearers, the way in which they 
listened to him, all impressed me. Subsequently, being sent 
to his house, I found him in his small front parlor, a yellow 
plush album on the marble-topped center table, horse-hair 
furniture about the room, a red carpet, crayon enlargements 
of photographs of his mother and father. But what force in 
the man ! What innate gentility of manner and speech ! He 
seemed like a prince disguised as a blacksmith. 

"So ye've come to interview me," he said soothingly. 
"Ye 're from the Globe-Democrat — well, that paper's no par- 
ticular friend of mine, but ye can 't help that, can ye 1 " and 
then he told me whatever it was I wanted to know, giving me 
no least true light, you may be sure. At the conclusion he 
offered me a drink, which I refused. As I was about to leave 
he surveyed me pleasantly and tolerantly. 

"Ye 're a likely lad," he said, laying an immense hand on 
one of my lean shoulders, "and ye 're jest startin' out in life, 



110 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

I can see that. Well, be a good boy. Ye 're in the newspaper 
business, where ye can make friends or enemies just as ye 
choose, and if ye behave yerself right ye can just as well make 
friends. Come an' see me some time. I like yer looks. I'm 
always here av an evenin', when I'm not attendin' a meetin' 
av some kind, right here in this little front room, or in the 
kitchen with me wife. I might be able to do something fer ye 
sometime — remember that. I've a good dale av influence 
here. Ye '11 have to write what ye 're told, I know that, so I 
won't be offended. So come an' see me, an' remember that 
I want nothin' av ye," and he gently ushered me out and 
closed the door behind me. 

But I never went, at least not for anything for myself. The 
one time I asked him for a position for a friend who wanted 
to work on the local street-cars as a conductor he wrote across 
the letter : ' ' Give this man what he wants. ' ' It was wretchedly 
scrawled (the man brought it back to me before presenting 
it) and was signed "edward butler." But the man was given 
the place at once. 

Although Butler was an earnest Catholic, he was supposed 
to control and tax the vice of the city; which charge may or 
may not have been true. One of his sons owned and managed 
the leading vaudeville house in the city, a vulgar burlesque 
theater, at which the ticket taker was Frank James, brother of 
the amazing Jesse who terrorized Missouri and the Southwest 
as an outlaw at one time and enriched endless dime novel 
publishers afterward. As dramatic critic of the Globe' 
Democrat later I often saw him. Butler's son, a more or less 
stodgy type of Tammany politician, popular with a certain ele- 
ment in St. Louis, was later elected to Congress. 

I wrote up a labor meeting or two, and at one of these saw 
for the first time Terence V. Powderly, the head of the domi- 
nant labor organization — the Knights of Labor. This meet- 
ing was held in a dingy hall at Ninth or Tenth and Walnut, a 
dismal institution known as the Workingman's Club or some 
such thing as that, which had a single red light hanging out 
over its main entrance. This long, lank leader, afterward so 
much discussed in the so-called "capitalistic press," was 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 111 

sitting on a wretched platform surrounded by local labor 
leaders and discussed in a none too brilliant way, I thought, 
the need of a closer union between all classes of labor. 

In regard to all matters relating to the rights of labor and 
capital I was at this time perfectly ignorant. Although I was 
a laborer myself in a fair sense of the word I was more or 
less out of sympathy with laborers, not as a class struggling 
for their "rights" (I did not know what their rights or 
wrongs were) but merely as individuals. I thought, I sup- 
pose, that they were not quite as nice as I was, not as refined 
and superior in their aspirations, and therefore not as worthy 
or at least not destined to succeed as well as I. I even then felt 
dimly what subsequently, after many rough disillusionments, 
I came to accept as a fact : that some people are born dull, some 
shrewd, some wise and some undisturbedly ignorant, some ten- 
der and some savage, ad infinitum. Some are silk purses and 
others sows' ears and cannot be made the one into the other 
by any accident of either poverty or wealth. At this time, 
however, after listening to Mr. Powderly and taking notes of 
his speech, I came to the conclusion that all laborers had a just 
right to much better pay and living conditions, and in conse- 
quence had a great cause and ought to stick together. I also 
saw that Mr. Powderly was a very shrewd man and something 
of a hypocrite, very simple-seeming and yet not so. Some- 
thing he said or did — I believe it was a remark to the effect 
that ' ' I always say a little prayer whenever I have a stitch in 
my side" — irritated me. It was so suave, so Englishrchap el- 
people-like ; and he was an Englishman, as I recall it. Any- 
how, I came away disliking him and his local labor group, and 
yet liking his cause and believing in it, and wrote as favorable 
a comment as I dared. The Qldbe was not pro-corporation 
exactly, at least I did not understand so, and yet it was by no 
means pro-workingman either. If I recall correctly, it merely 
gave the barest facts and let it go at that. 



CHAPTER XX 

My connection with the Globe-Democrat had many aspects, 
chief among which was my rapidly developing consciousness 
of the significance of journalism and its relation to the life of 
the nation and the state. My journalistic career had begun 
only five months before and preceding that I had had no 
newspaper experience of any kind. The most casual reader 
of a newspaper would have been as good as I in many respects. 

But here I rather sensed the significance of it all, the power 
of a man like McCullagh, for instance, for good or evil, the 
significance of a man like Butler in this community. I still 
had a lot to learn : the extent of graft in connection with poli- 
tics in a city, the power of a newspaper to make sentiment in 
a State and so help to carry it for a Governor or a President. 
The political talk I heard on the part of one newspaper man 
and another "doing politics," as well as the leading edi- 
torials in this and other papers, which just at this time were 
concerned with a coming mayoralty fight and a feud in the 
State between rival leaders of the Republican party, com- 
pletely cleared up the situation for me. I listened to all the 
gossip, read the papers carefully, wondered over the person- 
alities and oddities of State governments in connection with 
our national government. Just over the river in Illinois every- 
body was concerned with the administration of John P. Alt- 
geld, governor of the State, and whether he would pardon the 
Chicago anarchists whose death sentences, recorded a few 
years before, had been commuted to life imprisonment. On 
this side of the river everybody was interested in the admin- 
istration of William Joel Stone, who was the governor. A man 
by the name of Cyrus H. "Walbridge was certain to be the next 
mayor if the Republicans won, and according to the Globe, 
they ought to win because the city needed to be reformed. The 
local Democratic board of aldermen was supposed to be the 

112 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 113 

most corrupt in all America (how many cities have yearly 
thought that, each of its governing body, since the nation be- 
gan!), and Edward Noonan, the mayor, was supposed to 
be the lowest and vilest creature that ever stood up in shoes. 
The chief editorials of the Globe were frequently concerned 
with blazing denunciations of him. As far as I could make 
out, he had joined with various corporations and certain mem- 
bers of council to steal from the city, sell its valuable fran- 
chises for a song and the like. He had also joined with the 
police in helping bleed the saloons, gambling dens and houses 
of prostitution. Gambling and prostitution were never so 
rampant as now, so our good paper stated. The good people 
of the city should join and help save the city from destruction. 

How familiar it all sounds, doesn't it? Well, this was 1892, 
and I have heard the same song every year since, in every 
American city in which I have ever been. Gambling, prosti- 
tution, graft, et cetera, must be among our national weak- 
nesses, not? 

Just the same, in so far as this particular office and the 
country about St. Louis were concerned, Joseph McCullagh 
was of immense significance to his staff and the natives. 
Plainly he was like a god to many of them, the farmers and 
residents in small towns in States like Texas, Iowa, Missouri, 
Arkansas and in Southern Illinois, where his paper chiefly cir- 
culated, for they came to the office whenever they were in the 
city merely to get a glimpse of him. He was held in high es- 
teem by his staff, and was one of the few editors of his day 
who really deserved to be. Within his office he had an ador- 
ing group of followers, which included everyone from the 

managing editor down. "The chief says ," "The chief 

thinks ," "The old man looks a little grouchy this morn- 
ing — what do you think?" "Gee, wait '11 the old man hears 
about that! He'll be hopping!" "That ought to please the 
old man, don't you think? He likes a bit of good writing." 
Yet for all this chatter, ' ' the old man ' ' never seemed to notice 
much of anything or have much to say to any one, except pos- 
sibly to one or two of his leading editorial writers and his tele- 
graph editor. If he ever conferred with his stout city editor 



114 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

for more than one moment at a time I never saw or heard of it. 
And if anything seen or heard by anybody in connection with 
him was not whispered about the reporters ' room before night- 
fall or daybreak it was a marvel of concealment. Occasionally 
he might be seen ambling down the hall to the lavatory or to 
the room of his telegraph chief, but most always it was merely 
to take his carriage or walk to the Southern Hotel at one 
o 'clock for his luncheon or at six for his dinner, his derby hat 
pulled over his eyes, his white socks gleaming, a cane in his 
hand, a cigar between his lips. If he ever had a crony it 
was not known in the reporters' room. He was a solitary or 
eccentric, and a few years later, as I have said, he leaped 
to his death from the second story window of his home, where 
he had lived in as much privacy and singularity as a Catholic 
priest. 

There were silent figures slipping about — Captain King, a 
chief editorial writer ; Casper S. Yost, a secretary of the cor- 
poration, assistant editor and what not ; several minor editors, 
artists, reporters, the city editor, the business manager — but 
no one or all of them collectively seemed to amount to a hill 
of beans. Only "the old man" or J. B., as he was occasionally 
referred to, counted. Under him the paper had character, 
succinctness and point, not only in its news but in its editorial 
columns. Although it was among the conventional of the 
conventional of its day (what American newspaper of that 
period could have been otherwise?), still it had an aware- 
ness which made one feel that "the old man" knew much 
more than he ever wrote. He seemed to like to have it 
referred to as "the great religious daily" and often quoted 
that phrase, but with the saving grace of humor behind it. 

And he seemed to understand just how to supply that 
region with all it desired in the shape of news. Though in the 
main the paper published mere gossip, oddities about storms, 
accidents, eccentricities, still there was something about the 
way the thing was done, the crisp and brief manner in which 
the material was edited, which made it palatable — very 
much so, I should say, to the small-town store-lounger or 
owner — and nearly all had humor, naivete or pathos. The 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 115 

drift of things politically was always presented in leaders in 
such a way that even I, a mere stripling, began to get a sense 
of things national and international. States, the adjacent ones 
in particular, which supplied the bulk of the Globe's circula- 
tion, were given special attention and yet in such a way as not 
to irritate the general reader, leaving it optional with him 
whether he should read or not. The editorials, sometimes 
informing, sometimes threatening and directive, sometimes 
mere fol-de-rol and foolery, and intended as such, had a 
delicious whimsy in them. Occasionally "the old man" him- 
self wrote one and then everybody sat up and took notice. One 
could easily single it out even if it had not been passed around, 
as it nearly always was. ' ' The old man wrote that. " ' ' Have 
you read the old man's editorial in this morning's paper ? Gee ! 
Read it ! " Then you expected brilliant, biting words, a lumi- 
nous phraseology, sentences that cracked like a whip, and you 
were rarely disappointed. The paragraphs exploded at times, 
burst like a torpedo; at others the whole thing ended like 
music, the deep, sonorous bass of an organ. "The old man" 
could write, there was no doubt of that. He also seemed to 
believe what he wrote, for the time being anyhow. That was 
why his staff, to a man, revered him. He was a real editor, 
as contrasted with your namby-pamby "business man" mas- 
querading as editor. He had been a great reporter and war 
correspondent in his day, one of the men who were with Farra- 
gut on the Mississippi and with Sherman and others else- 
where during the great Civil War. 

Wandering about this building at this time was an old red- 
faced, red-nosed German, with a protuberant stomach, very 
genial, dull and apparently unimportant. He was, as I later 
learned, the real owner of the paper, the major portion of the 
stock being in his name ; and yet, as every one seemed to un- 
derstand, he never dared pose as such but must slip about, as 
much overawed as the rest of us. I was a mere underling and 
new to the place, and yet I could see it. A more apologetic 
mien and a more obliging manner was never worn by any mor- 
tal, especially when he was in the vicinity of McCullagh's 
office. His name was Daniel M. Hauser. For the most part he 



116 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

wandered about the building like a ghost, seeming to wish to be 
somebody or to say something but absolutely without mean- 
ing. The short, stout Napoleonic editor ruled supreme. 

By degrees I made friends with a number of those that 
worked here : Bob Hazard ; Jock Bellairs, son of the Captain 
Bellairs who presided over the city zoo ; Charlie Benson, and 
a long list of others whose names escape me now. Of all those 
on the city staff I was inclined to like Hazard most, for he was 
a personage, a character, quick, gay, intellectual, literary, 
forceful. Why he never came to greater literary fame I do not 
know, for he seemed to have all the flair and feeling necessary 
for the task. He was an only son of some man who had long 
been a resident of St. Louis and was himself well known about 
town. He lived with a mother and sister in southwest St. 
Louis in a small cottage which always pleased me because of 
its hominess, and supported that mother and sister in loyal 
son-like fashion. I had not been long on the paper before I 
was invited there to dinner, and this in spite of a rivalry which 
was almost immediately and unconsciously set up between us 
the moment I arrived and which endured in a mild way even 
after our more or less allied literary interests had drawn us 
socially together. At his home I met his sister, a mere slip 
of a tow-headed girl, whom later on I saw in vaudeville as a 
headliner. Hazard I encountered years later as a blase corre- 
spondent in Washington, representing a league of papers. He 
had then but newly completed a wild- West thriller, done in 
cold blood and with an eye to a quick sale. Assuming that I 
had influence with publishers and editors, he invoked my aid. 
I gave him such advice and such letters as I could. But only 
a few months later I read that Robert Hazard, well-known 
newspaper correspondent, living with his wife and child in 
some Washington residence section, had placed a revolver to 
his temple and ended it all. Why, I have often wondered. He 
was seemingly so well fitted mentally and physically to enjoy 
life. . . . Or is it mental fitness that really kills the taste for life ? 

I would not dwell on him at such length save for some 
other things which I propose later to narrate. For the moment 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 117 

I wish to turn to another individual, "Jock" Bellairs, who 

impressed me as a most curious compound of indifference, wis- 
dom, literary and political sense and a hard social cunning'. 
He had a capacity for (as some one in the office once phrased 
it) a "lewd and profane life." He was the chief police re- 
porter at a building known as the "Four Courts," an in- 
stitution which housed, among other things, four judicial 
chambers of differing jurisdiction, as well as the county jail, 
the city detention wards, the office of the district attorney, 
the chief of police, chief of detectives, the city attorney, and 
a "reporters' room" where all the local reporters were per- 
mitted to gather and were furnished paper, ink, tables. 

A more dismal atmosphere than that which prevailed in 
this building, and in similar institutions in all the cities in 
which I ever worked, would be hard to find. In Chicago it 
was the city hall and county courthouse, with its police at- 
tachment; in Pittsburgh the county jail; in New York the 
Tombs and Criminal Courts Building, with police headquar- 
ters as a part of its grim attachment. I know of nothing 
worse. These places, essential as they are, are always low in 
tone, vile, and defile nearly all they touch. They have a 
corrupting effect upon those with whom they come in contact 
and upon those who are employed to administer law or "jus- 
tice." Harlots, criminals, murderers, buzzard lawyers, poli- 
tical judges, detectives, police agents, and court officials gen- 
erally — what a company! I have never had anything to do 
with one of these institutions in any city as reporter, plaintiff 
or assisting friend, without sensing anew the brutality and 
horror of legal administration. The petty tyrannies that are 
practiced by underlings and minor officials! The "grafting" 
of low, swinish brains! The tawdry pomp of ignorant offi- 
cials! The cruelty and cunning of agents of justice! "Set 
a thief to catch a thief." Clothe these officials as you will, 
in whatsoever uniforms of whatsoever splendor or sobriety; 
give them desks of rosewood and walls of flowered damask; 
entitle them as you choose, High and Mightiness This and 
That — still they remain the degraded things they have always 
been, equals of the criminals and the crimes they are supposed 



118 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to do away with. It cannot be helped ; it is a law of chemis- 
try, of creation. Offal breeds maggots to take care of it, to 
nullify its stench; carrion has its buzzards, carrion crows 
and condors. So with criminals and those petty officials of 
the lower courts and jails who are set to catch them. 

But this is a wandering paragraph and has little to do with 
"Jock" Bellairs, except that he was of and yet not of this 
particular atmosphere. The first time I saw him I felt com- 
pelled to study him, for he seemed somehow to suggest this 
atmosphere to which he was appointed as reporter. He was 
in a way, and yet with pleasing reservations, the man for this 
task. He had a sense of humor and a devil-may-care ap- 
proach to all this. Whenever anything of real import broke 
loose he was always the one to be called upon for information 
or aid, because he was in close touch with the police and 
detectives, who were his cronies and ready to aid him. And 
whenever anything happened that was beyond his power to 
manage he called up the office for aid. On more than one 
occasion, some ' ' mystery ' ' coming up, I was the one delegated 
to help him, the supposition being that it was likely to yield 
a "big" story, bigger than he had time for, being a court 
fixture. I then sought him out at the Four Courts and 
was given what he knew, whereupon I began investigations 
on my own account. Nearly always I found him lolling 
about with other reporters and detectives, a chair tilted 
back, possibly a game of cards going on between him and 
the reporters of other papers, a bottle of whisky in his pocket 
— ' ' to save time, " as he once amusingly remarked — and a girl 
or two present, friends of one or other of these newspaper 
men, their "dollies." He would rise and explain to me 
just what was going on, whisper confidentially in my ear the 
name of some other newspaper man who had been put on 
the case by one of the other papers, perhaps ask me to mention 
the name of some shabby policeman or detective who had been 
assigned to the case, one who was "a good fellow" and 
who could be depended upon to help us in the future. 

I often had to smile, he was so naive and yet so wise in his 
position, so matter-of-fact and commonplace about it all. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 119 

Sometimes he would give me the most befuddling information 
as to how the news got out : he and John Somebody or Other 
were down at Maggie Sanders's place in Chestnut Street 
the other night, where he heard from a detective, who was 
telling somebody else, who told somebody else, and so on. 
Then, if there was a prisoner in the case, he would take me 
to him, or tell me where some individual or the body was 
to be found if there was a body. Then, after I had gone about 
my labors, he would return to his card-game, his girl and his 
bottle. There were stories afloat of outings with these girls, 
or the using of some empty room in this building for immoral 
purposes, with the consent of complaisant officials. And all 
about, of course, was this atmosphere of detained criminals, 
cases at trial, hurrying parents and members of families, 
weeping mothers and sisters — a mess. 

On an average of twice a month during my stay in St. Louis 
I was called to this building on one errand and another, and 
always I went with a sicky and sinking sensation, and always 
I came away from it breathing a sigh of relief. To me it was 
a horrible place, a pest-hole of suffering and error and 
trickery, and yet necessary enough, I know. 



CHAPTER XXI 

I was walking down the marble hall of our editorial floor 
one day not long after I arrived when I noted on a door at 
its extreme end the words: "Art Department." The Globe 
in Chicago had no art department, at least I never discovered 
it. The mere word art, although I had no real understanding 
of it, was fascinating to me. "Was it not on every tongue? 
A man who painted or drew was an artist; Dore was one, 
for instance, and Rembrandt, (I classed the two together.) 
In Chicago I had of course known that each paper should 
have an art department, and that interested me in this one. 
What were artists like? I had never known one. 

Another day I was on my way to the lavatory when I dis- 
covered that I had come away without the key, a duplicate 
of which every department possessed. The art department 
door being nearest, I entered to borrow theirs. Behold, three 
distinctive if not distinguished looking individuals at work 
upon drawings laid upon drawing-boards. Two of these 
looked up, the one nearest me with a look of criticism in his 
eye, I thought. The one who answered me when I asked for 
the key, and who swiftly arose to get it for me, was short 
and stocky, with bushy, tramp-like hair and heard. There 
was something that savored of opera bouffe about him, and 
yet, as I could see, he took himself seriously enough. There 
was something pleasing in his voice too as he said, "Cer- 
tainly ; here it is, ' ' and smiled. 

The one who had looked up at first and frowned but made 
no move was much less cheery. I recall the long, thin, sallow 
face, the coal-black hair, long and coarse, which was parted 
most carefully in the middle and slicked down at the sides 
and back over the ears until it looked as though it had been 
oiled, and the eyes, black and small and querulous and petu- 
lant, as was the mouth, with drawn lines at each corner, as 

120 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 121 

though he had endured much pain. That long, loose, flowing 
black tie! And that soft white or blue or green or brown 
linen shirt! — would any Quartier Latin denizen have been 
without them? He had thin, pale bony hands, long and 
graceful, and an air of "touch thou me not, defiled one." 
The man appealed to and repelled me at a glance, appealing 
to me much more later, and ever remained a human humor- 
esque, something to coddle, endure, decipher, laugh at. Surely 
Dick Wood, or "Richard Wood, Artist," as his card read, 
might safely be placed in any pantheon of the unconvention- 
ally ridiculous and delicious. 

This visit provided a mere glance, however. When I re- 
turned the key I was given no encouragement. A little later, 
my ability to write having been fairly established, I was given 
a rather large order for one so new: a double-page spread, 
with illustrations, for the Sunday issue, relating to the new 
depot then under construction. I was told to see that the art 
department supplied several drawings — one in particular of 
a proposed iron and glass train-shed which was to cover 
thirty-two tracks. Also one of a clock-tower two hundred 
and thirty-two feet high. This assignment seemed a very 
honorable one, since it was to carry drawings, and I went 
about it with energy and enthusiasm. It was Mitchell who 
told me to look to the art department for suitable illustrations. 

Evidently the art department knew all about it before my 
arrival, for upon inquiry I found that P. B. McCord, he of 
the tramp-like hair and whiskers, was scheduled to make the 
pictures. His manner pleased me. He was so cordial, so 
helpful. Together we visited the depot, and a few days later 
he called upon me in the reportorial room to ask me to come 
and see what he had done. Having in regard to most things 
the same point of view, we were soon the best of friends. 
A more or less affectionate relationship was then and there 
established, which endured until his death sixteen years later. 
During all of that period we were scarcely out of touch with 
each other, and through him I was destined to achieve some of 
my sanest conceptions of life. (See Peter. Twelve Men.) 

And the amazing Wood! I have never encountered another 



122 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

like him, possibly because for years I have not been associated 
with young people, who are frequently full of eccentricities. 
A more romantic ass than Wood never lived, nor one with 
better sense in many ways. In regard to newspaper drawing 
he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, if so much, but 
in other ways he was fascinating enough. He and McCord 
were compelled at that time to use the old chalk plate process 
for much of their hurried work, a thing which required the 
artist to scratch with a steel upon a chalk-covered surface, 
blowing the chalk away from his outlines as he made them. 
This created a dust which both McCord and Wood com- 
plained of as being disagreeable and "hard on the lungs." 
Wood, who pretended to be dying of consumption, and did die 
of it sixteen years later within a month of his friend McCord, 
made an awful row about it, although he could easily have 
done much to mend matters by taking a little exercise and 
keeping out of doors as much as possible; but he preferred 
to hover over a radiator or before a fire. Always, on every 
occasion, he was given to playing the role of the martyr. 

Spiritually he was morbid, as was I, only he showed it 
much more in his manner. He had much the same desire as 
I had at the time: to share in the splendors of marble halls 
and palaces and high places generally; and, like myself, he 
had but little chance. Fresh from Bloomington, Illinois, a 
commonplace American town, he was obsessed by the common- 
place dream of marrying rich and coming into the imaginary 
splendors of that west end life of St. Louis which was so 
interesting to both of us. Far more than myself, I am sure, 
he seemed to be seething with an inward rebellion against 
the fact that he was poor, not included in the exclusive pleas- 
ures of the rich. At the same time he was glowing with 
a desire to make other people imagine that he was or soon 
would be of them. What airs ! what shades of manner ! He, 
like myself, was forever dreaming of some gorgeous maiden, 
rich, beautiful, socially elect, who was to solve all his troubles 
for him. But there was this difference between us, or so I 
imagined at the time, Dick being an artist, rather remote and 
disdainful in manner and handsome as well as poetic and 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 123 

better-positioned than myself, as I fancied, was certain to 
achieve this gilded and crystal state whereas I, not being 
so handsome, nor an artist, nor sufficiently poetic, could 
hardly aspire to so gorgeous an end. I might perchance 
arrive at some such goal if I sought it eagerly enough, but 
the probabilities were that I should not unless I waited a 
long while, and besides, my dreams and plans varied so 
swiftly from day to day that I couldn't be sure what I 
wanted to do, whereas "Wood, being so stable in this, that 
and the other (all the things I was not), was certain to arrive 
quickly. 

Sometimes around dinner time when I would see him 
leaving the office arrayed in the latest mode, as I assumed — 
dark blue suit, patent leather boots, dark, round, soft felt 
hat, loose tie blowing idly about his neck, neat thin cane in his 
hand — I was fairly convinced that this much-anticipated for- 
tune had already arrived or was about to arrive, this very 
evening perhaps, and that I should never see him more, never 
even be permitted to speak to him. Somewhere (out in the 
west end, of course) was the girl, wondrous, rich, beautiful, 
with whom he was to elope and be forgiven by her wealthy 
parents. Even now he was on his way to her, while I, poor 
oaf that I was, was moiling here over some trucky task. 
"Would my ship never come in, my great day arrive ? 

And Wood was just the type of person who would take in- 
finite delight in creating such an impression. Ten years later, 
when McCord and I were in the East together and Wood was 
still in St. Louis, we were never weary of discussing this 
histrionic characteristic of his, laughing sympathetically with 
and at him. Later he married — but I shall not anticipate. 
Mentally, at this time, he was living a dream and in so 
far as possible acting it, playing the part of some noble 
Algernon Charles Claude Vere de Vere, heir to or affianced to 
some maid with an immense fortune which was to make them 
both eternally happy and allow him to travel, pose, patronize 
as he chose. A laudable dream, verily. 

But I — I confess that I was bitter with envy. What, never 
to shine thus? Never to be an artist? Never to have beauty 



124 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

in my lap? For me there were other stings, in connection 
with him — stings sharp as serpents' teeth. Dick had a wrist- 
watch, the envy of my youthful days (oh, wondrous watch!) 
Also a scarf pin made of some strange stone brought from the 
Orient and with a cabalistic sign or word on it (enough in 
itself to entice any heiress) — and that boiitonmere of violets! 
He was never without them. 

And along with all this, that sad, wan, reproachful, dying 
smile! And that mysterious something of manner which 
seemed to say: "My boy! My boy! The things you will 
never know!" 

And yet after a time Dick condescended to receive me into 
his confidence and into his "studio," a very picturesque 
affair, situated in the heart of the downtown district. Also 
he condescended to bestow upon me some of his dreams as 
well as his friendly presence ; a thing which exalted me, being 
so new to this art world. I was permitted (note the word) to 
gather dimly, as neophyte from priest, the faintest outlines of 
these wondrous dreams of his, and to share with him the 
hope that they might be realized. I was so set up by this 
great favor that I felt certain great things must flow from it. 
Assuredly we three could do great things if only we would 
stick together. But was I worthy? There were already ru- 
mors of books, plays, stories, poems, to come from a certain 
mighty pen — as a matter of fact, it was already hard upon the 
task of writing them — which were to set the world aflame by- 
and-by. Certain editors in New York were already receiv- 
ing (and sending back, alas!) certain preliminary master- 
pieces along with carefully worded suggestions in regard to 
slight but necessary changes which would perfect them and 
so inaugurate the new era. Certain writers, certain poets, 
certain playwrights were already better than any that had 
ever been — the best ever, in short. Dick knew, of course, 
and I was allowed to share this knowledge, to be thrilled by it. 



CHAPTER XXII 

Once the ice was broken in this way intimacy with these 
twain came fast enough, although I never became quite as 
intimate with Dick as I did with Peter, largely because I could 
not think him as important. Wood had some feminine char- 
acteristics; he could be very jealous of anybody's interest 
in Peter as well as Peter's interest in anybody else. He 
was big enough, at times, to see the pettiness of this and 
try to rise above it, but at other times it would show. Years 
later McCord confided to me in the most amused way how, 
when I first appeared on the scene, Dick at once began to 
belittle me and to resent my obvious desire to "break in," 
as he phrased it, these two, according to Dick, having estab- 
lished some excluding secret union. 

But the union was not exclusive, in so far as Peter was 
concerned. Shortly after my arrival young Hartung had 
begun running into the art room (so Peter told me) with 
amazing tales of the new man, his exploits in Chicago. I had 
been sent for to come to this paper — that was the great thing. 
I was vouched for by no less a person than John T. McEnnis, 
one of the famous newspaper men of St. Louis and a former 
city editor of this same paper; also by a Mr. Somebody (the 
Washington correspondent of the paper), for whom I had 
worked in Chicago on the World's Fair. He had hurried to 
the art department with his tales of me, wishing, I fancy, 
to be on friendly and happy terms there. Dick, however, con- 
sidered Hartung 's judgment as less than nothing, himself an 
upstart, a mere office rat ; to have him endeavor to introduce 
anybody was too much. At first he received me very coldly, 
then finding me perhaps better than he thought, he hastened 
to make friends with me. 

The halcyon hours with these two that followed. Not in- 
frequently Peter and Dick would dine together at some down- 

125 



126 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

town restaurant ; or, if a rush of work were on and they were 
compelled to linger, they had a late supper in some Ger- 
man saloon. It was Peter who first invited me to one of 
these late seances, and later Wood did the same, but this 
last was based on another development in connection with 
myself which I should narrate here. 

The office of the Globe proved a sprouting-bed for incipient 
literary talent. Hazard had, some fifteen or eighteen months 
before, in company with another newspaper man of whom 
later I heard amazing things, written a novel entitled Theo, 
which was plainly a bog-fire kindled by those blazing French 
suns, Zola and Balzac. The scene was laid in Paris (imagine 
two "Western newspaper men who had never been out of Amer- 
ica writing a novel of French life and laying it in Paris!) 
and had much of the atmosphere of Zola's Nana, plus the 
delicious idealism of Balzac 's The Great Man from the Prov- 
inces. Never having read either of these authors at this time, 
I did not see the similarity, but later I saw it plainly. One 
or both of these men had fed up on the French realists to 
such an extent that they were able to create the illusion of 
France (for me at least) and at the same time to fire me 
with a desire to create something, perhaps a novel of this 
kind but preferably a play. It seemed intensely beautiful to 
me at the time, this book, with its frank pictures of raw, 
greedy, sensual human nature, and its open pictures of self- 
indulgence and vice. 

The way this came about was interesting but I would not 
relate it save that it had such a marked effect on me. I was 
sitting in the city reportorial room later one gloomy December 
afternoon, having returned from a fruitless assignment, when 
a letter was handed me. It was postmarked Chicago and 
addressed in the handwriting of Alice. Up to then I had 
allowed matters to drift, having, as I have said, written but 
one letter in which I apologized rather indifferently for hav- 
ing come away without seeing her. But my conscience had 
been paining me so much that when I saw her writing I 
started. I tore the letter open and read with a sense of 
shame : 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 127 

"Dear Theo: 

"I got your letter the day you left, but then it was too late. I 
know what you say is true, about your being called away, and I don't 
blame you. I'm only sorry our quarrel" (there had been none save 
of my making) "didn't let you come to see me before you left. Still, 
that was my fault too, I guess. I can't blame you entirely for that. 

' ' Anyhow, Theo, that isn 't what I 'm writing you for. You know that 
you haven't been just the same to me as you once were. I know 
how you feel. I have felt it too. I want to know if you won't send 
me back the letters I wrote you. You won't want them now. Please 
send them, Theo, and believe I am as ever your friend, 

"Alice." 

There was a little blank space on the paper, and then : 

"I stood by the window last night and looked out on the street. The 
moon was shining and those dead trees over the way were waving in 
the wind. I saw the moon on that little pool of water over in the 
field. It looked like silver. Oh, Theo, I wish I were dead." 

As I read this I jumped up and clutched the letter. The 
pathos of it cut me to the quick. To think I should have left 
her so! To think I should be here and she there! Why 
hadn't I written? Why had I shilly-shallied these many 
days ? Of course she wished to die. And I — what of me ? 

I went over the situation and tried to figure out what I 
should do. Should I send for her? Twenty dollars a week 
was very little for two. My legitimate expenses made a total 
of eleven a week. I wished to keep myself looking well, to 
have a decent room, to eat three fair meals a day. And I was 
in no position to return to Chicago, where I had earned less. 
Then my new friendships with Wood and McCord as well 
as with other newspaper men, nearly all of whom liked to 
drink, were costing me something extra; I could not associate 
with them without buying an occasional drink. I did not 
see where I was to save much or how I could support a wife. 
In addition, there was the newness of my position here. I 
could not very well leave it now, having just come from Chi- 
cago. By nature where things material of futurial were con- 
cerned I was timid, but little inclined to battle for my rights 
or desires, and consequently not often realizing them. I was 
in a trying situation, for I had, as I have said, let it appear to 
Alice that money was no object. With the vanity of youth, I 
had always talked of my good salary and comfortable position, 
and now that this salary and comfortable position were to 



128 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

be put to the test I did not know what to do about it. Honesty 
would have dictated a heartfelt confession, of course. 

But I made none. Instead I wavered between two horns 
of an ever-recurring dilemma. Sympathizing with the pain 
which Alice was suffering, and alive to my own loss of 
honor and happiness, still I hesitated to pull down the fine pic- 
ture of myself which I had so artistically built up, to reveal 
myself as I really was, a man unable to marry on his 
present salary. If I had loved her more, if I had really 
respected her, if I had not looked upon her as one who might 
be so easily put aside, I would have done something about it. 
My natural tendency was to drift, to wait and see, suffering 
untold agonies in the meanwhile. This I was preparing to do 
now. 

These mental stresses were always sufficient, however, to 
throw me into a soulful mood. And now as I looked out of 
the window on the "fast widowing sky" it was with an ache 
that rivaled in intensity those melancholy moods we some- 
times find interpreted by music. Indeed my heart was torn 
by the inextricable problems which life seemed ever to present 
and. I fairly wrung my hands as I looked into the face of the 
hurrying world. How it was hastening away! How swiftly 
and insensibly my own life was slipping by ! The few sweets 
which I had thus far tasted were always accompanied by such 
bitter repinings. No pleasure was without pain, as I had al- 
ready seen, and life offered no solution. Only silence and the 
grave ended it all. 

My body was racked with a fine tremor, my brain ached. 
I went to my desk and took up a pencil. I sat looking 
into the face of the tangle as one might into the gathering 
front of a storm. Words moved in my brain, then bubbled, 
then marshaled themselves into curious lines and rhythms. 
I put my pencil to paper and wrote line after line. 

Presently I saw that I was writing a poem but that it was 
rough and needed modifying and polishing. I was in a great 
fever to change it and did so but more eager to go on with 
my idea, which was about this tangle of life. I became so 
moved and interested that I almost forgot Alice in the proc- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 129 

ess. When I read it over it seemed but a poor reflection of 
the thoughts I had felt, the great sad mood I was in. Then 
I sat there, dissatisfied and unhappy, resolving to write Alice 
and tell her all. 

I took a pen and wrote her that I could not marry her 
now, that I was in no position to do so. Later, if I found 
myself in better shape financially, I would come back. I 
told her that I did not want to send back her letters, that I 
did not wish to think our love was at an end. I had not 
meant to run away. I closed by saying that I still loved 
her and that the picture she had painted of herself standing 
at the window in the moonlight had torn my heart. But I 
could not write it as effectually as I might have, for I was 
haunted by the idea that I should never keep my word. Some- 
thing kept telling me that it was not wise, that I didn 't really 
want to. 

While I was writing Hazard came into the room and glanced 
over my shoulder to where the poem was lying. "What you 
doing, Dreiser? Writing poetry?" 

"Trying to," I replied a little shamefacedly. "I don't 
seem to be able to make much of it, though. ' ' The while I 
was wondering at the novelty of being taken for a poet. It 
seemed such a fine thing to be. 

"There's no money in it," he observed helpfully. "You 
can't sell 'em. I've written tons of 'em, but it don't do any 
good. You'd better be putting your time on a book or a 
play." 

A book or a play ! I sat up. To be considered a writer, a 
dramatist — even a possible dramatist — raised me in my own 
estimation. Why, at this rate I might become one — who 
knows ? 

"I know it isn't profitable," I said. "Still, it might be 
if I wrote them well enough. It would be a great thing to 
be a great poet." 

Hazard smiled sardonically. From his pinnacle of twenty- 
six years such aspirations seemed ridiculous. I might be a 
good newspaper man (I think he was willing to admit that), 
but a poet ! 



130 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

The discussion took the turn of book-and play-writing. He 
had written a book in connection with Young, I think his 
name was. He had lately been thinking of writing a play. 
He expatiated on the money there was to be made out of 
this, the great name some playwrights achieved. Look at 
Augustus Thomas now, who had once worked on the Star 
here. One of his pieces was then running in St. Louis. Look 
at Henry Blossom, once a St. Louis society boy, one of whose 
books was now in the local bookstore windows, a hit. To my 
excited mind the city was teeming with brilliant examples. 
Eugene Field had once worked here, on this very paper ; Mark 
Twain had idled about here for a time, drunk and hopeless; 
"W. C. Brann had worked on and gone from this paper ; Wil- 
liam Marion Eeedy the same. 

I returned to my desk after a time, greatly stirred by this 
conversation. My gloom was dissipated. Hazard had prom- 
ised to let me read this book. This world was a splendid place 
for talent, I thought. It bestowed success and honor upon 
those who could succeed. Plays or books, or both, were the 
direct entrance to every joy which the heart could desire. 
Something of the rumored wonder and charm of the lives 
of successful playwrights came to me, their studios, their 
summer homes and the like. Here at last, then, was the 
equivalent of Dick's wealthy girl! 

I sat thinking about plays somewhat modified in my grief 
over Alice for the nonce, but none the less aware of its 
tremendous sadness. I read over my poem and thought it 
good, even beautiful. I must be a poet! I copied it and 
put a duplicate in Alice's letter, and folded my own copy and 
put it in my pocket, close to my heart. It seemed as though 
I had just forged a golden key to a world of beauty and 
light where sorrow and want could never be. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The central character of Hazard's book was an actress, 
young and very beautiful. Her lover was a newspaper man, 
deeply in love with her and yet not faithful, in one instance 
anyhow. This brought about a Zolaesque scene in which 
she spanked another actress with a hairbrush. There was 
treacherous plotting on the part of somebody in regard to a 
local murder, which brought about the arrest and conviction 
of the newspaper man for something he knew nothing about. 
This entailed a great struggle on the part of Theo to save 
him, which resulted in her failure and his death on the 
guillotine. A priest figured in it in some way, grim, Jesuitical. 

To this day some of the scenes of this book come back 
to me as having been forcefully done — the fight between the 
two actresses, for one thing, a midnight feast with several 
managers, the gallows scene, a confession. I am not sure 
of the name of the newspaper man who collaborated with 
Hazard on this work, but the picture of his death in an opium 
joint later, painted for me by Hazard, and the eccentricities 
of his daily life, stand out even now as Poe-like. He must 
have been blessed or cursed with some such temperament as 
that of Poe, dark, gloomy, reckless, poetic, for he was a dope- 
fiend and died of dope. 

Be that as it may, this posthumous work, never published, 
so far as I know, was the opening wedge for me into the realm 
of realism. Being distinctly imitative of Balzac and Zola, 
the method was new and to me > impressive. It has always 
struck me as curious that the first novel written by an Amer- 
ican that I read in manuscript should have been one which 
by reason of its subject matter and the puritanic character of 
the American mind could never be published. These two 
youths knew this. Hazard handed it to me with the state- 
ment : "Of course a thing like this could never be published 

131 



132 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

over here. We'd have to get it done abroad." That struck 
me as odd at the time — the fact that if one wrote a fine 
thing nevertheless because of an American standard I had 
not even thought of before, one might not get it published. 
How queer, I thought. Yet these two incipient artists 1 had 
already encountered it. They had been overawed to the extent 
of thinking it necessary to write of French, not American life 
in terms of fact. Such things as they felt called upon to relate 
occurred only in France, never here — or at least such things, 
if done here, were never spoken of. I think it nothing less 
than tragic that these men, or boys, fresh, forceful, imbued 
with a burning desire to present life as they saw it, were thus 
completely overawed by the moral hypocrisy of the American 
mind and did not even dare to think of sending their novel 
to an American publisher. Hazard was deeply impressed 
with the futility of attempting to do anything with a book 
of that kind. The publishers wouldn't stand for it. You 
couldn't write about life as it was; you had to write about it 
as somebody else thought it was, the ministers and farmers 
and dullards of the home. Yet here he was, as was I, busy in 
a profession that was hourly revealing the fact that this 
sweetness and light code, this idea of a perfect world which 
contained neither sin nor shame for any save vile outcasts, 
criminals and vagrants, was the trashiest lie that was ever 
foisted upon an all too human world. VNot a day, not an hour, 
but the pages of the very newspaper we were helping to 
fill with our scribbled observations were full of the most 
incisive pictures of the lack of virtue, honesty, kindness, even 
average human intelligence, not on the part of a few but of 
nearly everybody. Not a business, apparently, not a home, 
not a political or social organization or an individual but in 
the course of time was guilty of an infraction of some kind 
of this seemingly perfect and unbroken social and moral code. 
But in spite of all this, judging by the editorial page, the 
pulpit and the noble mouthings of the average citizen speaking 
for the benefit of his friends and neighbors, all men were 
honest — only they weren 't ; all women were virtuous and with- 
out evil intent or design — but they weren't; all mothers were 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 133 

gentle, self-sacrificing slaves, sweet pictures for songs and 
Sunday Schools — only they weren't; all fathers were kind, 
affectionate, saving, industrious — only they weren't. But 
when describing actual facts for the news columns, you were 
not allowed to indicate these things. Side by side with the 
most amazing columns of crimes of every kind and description 
would be other amazing columns of sweet mush about love, 
undying and sacrificial, editorials about the perfection of 
the American man, woman, child, his or her sweet deeds, in- 
tentions and the like — a wonderful dose. And all this last 
in the face of the other, which was supposed to represent the 
false state of things, merely passing indecencies, accidental 
errors that did not count. If a man like Hazard or myself 
had ventured to transpose a true picture of facts from the 
news columns of the papers, from our own reportorial experi- 
ences, into a story or novel, what a howl! Ostracism would 
have followed much more swiftly in that day than in this, 
for today turgid slush approximating at least some of the 
facts is tolerated. Fifteen years later Hazard told me he 
still had his book buried in a trunk somewhere, but by then 
he had turned to adventurous fiction, and a year later, as I 
have said, be blew his brains out. 

Just the same the book made a great impression on me ! It 
gave me a great respect for Hazard, made me really fond of 
him. And it fixed my mind definitely on this matter of writ- 
ing — not a novel, curiously, but a play, a form which from the 
first seemed easier for me and which I still consider so, one in 
which I work with greater ease than I do in the novel. I men- 
tioned to Wood and McCord that Hazard and another man had 
written a novel and that I had read it. I must have enthused 
over it for both were impressed, and I myself seemed to gain 
standing, especially with Wood. It was generally admitted 
then that Hazard was one of the best reporters in the city, 
and my being taken into his confidence in this fashion seemed 
to Wood to be a significant thing. 

And not long after that I had something else to tell these 
two which carried great weight. There was at that time on 



134 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the editorial page of the paper a column entitled "Heard in 
the Corridors," which was nothing more than a series of 
imaginary interviews with passing guests at the various ho- 
tels, or interviews condensed into short tales, about six to 
the column, one at least being accredited to a guest at each 
of the three principal hotels, the others standing accredited as 
things heard at the Union Station or upon the street some- 
where. Previous to my arrival this column had been written 
by various men, the last one having been the already famous 
"W. C. Brann, then editor of the brilliant Iconoclast. By the 
time I arrived, however, Brann had departed, and the column 
had sagged. Hazard was doing a part of it, Bellairs another, 
but both were tired of it. At first when I considered it (a 
little extra work added to my daily reporting) I was not 
so pleased; indeed it seemed an all but impossible thing to 
do. Later, however, after a trial, I discovered that it gave 
free rein to my wildest imaginings, which was exactly what 
I wanted. I could write any sort of story I pleased, romantic, 
realistic or lunatic, and credit it to some imaginary guest at 
one of the hotels, and if it was not too improbable it was 
passed without comment. At any rate, when this was as- 
signed to me I went forth to get names of personages stopping 
at the hotels. I inquired for celebrities. As a rule, the clerks 
could give me no information or were indifferent, and seemed 
to take very little interest in having the hotel advertised. I 
returned and racked my brain, decided that I could manu- 
facture names as well as stories, and forthwith scribbled six 
marvels, attaching such names as came into my mind. The 
next day these were all duly published and I was told to do 
the column regularly as well as my regular assignments. My 
asinine ebullience had won me a new task without any in- 
crease in pay. 

However, it seemed an honor to have a whole column 
assigned to me, and this honor I communicated to McCord 
and Wood. It was then that either Wood or McCord in- 
formed me that Brann had done it previously and had written 
snake stories for the paper into the bargain. This flattered 
me, for they pictured him for what he was, a rare soul, and I 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 135 

felt myself growing. Peter had illustrated some of these tales 
for him, for, as he said with mock dignity : "lam the official 
snake artist of this paper. ' ' That very night, as a reward for 
my efficiency I was invited by Dick to come to his room — 
the room, the studio — where he inflicted about nine of his 
horrible masterpieces upon me. 

I would not make so much of this great honor if it were 
not for what it meant to me then. The room was large and 
dark, on Broadway between Market and Walnut, with the cars 
jangling below. It contained one great white bed, a long 
table covered with the papers and literary compositions of 
Mr. Richard Wood, and was decorated and reinforced with 
that gentleman's conception of what constituted literary in- 
signia. On the walls hung dusty engravings representing the 
death of Hamlet and the tempting of Faust. In one cor- 
ner, over a chest of drawers, was the jagged blade of a 
sword-fish, and in another a most curious display of oriental 
coins. The top of the wardrobe was surmounted by a grue- 
some papier-mache head representing that somewhat de- 
mented creature known in England as Ally Sloper. A clear 
space at one corner of the table held a tin pail for carrying 
beer, and the floor, like the walls, was covered with some dusty 
brown material which might once have been a carpet. Owing 
to the darkness of the furnishings and the brightness of the 
fire, the room had a very cheery look. 

"Say, Dick, did you see where one of 's plays had 

made a great hit in New York 1 ' ' asked McCord. " He 's made 
a strike this time." 

"No," replied Dick solemnly, poking among the coals of 
the grate and drawing up a chair. ' ' Sit down, Dreiser. Pull 
up a chair, Peter. This confounded grate smokes whenever 
the wind's from the South. Still there's nothing like a grate 
fire." 

We drew up chairs. I was revolving in my mind the charm 
of the room and a vision of greatness in play-writing. These 
two men seemed subtly involved with the perfection of the 
arts. In this atmosphere, with such companions, I felt that I 
could accomplish anything, and soon. 



136 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

" I '11 tell you how it is with the game of play- writing, ' ' ob- 
served Dick sententiously. "You have to have imagination 
and feeling and all that, but what 's more important than any- 
thing is a little business sense, to know how to get in with 
those fellows. You might have the finest play in the world 
in your pocket, but if you didn't know how to dispose of it 
what good would it do you? None at all. You got to know 
that end first." 

He reached over and pulled the coal-scuttle into position 
as a footrest and then looked introspectively at the ceiling. 

' ' The play 's the thing, ' ' put in Peter. ' ' If you could write 
a real good play you wouldn 't need to worry about getting it 
staged. ' ' 

' ' Aw, wouldn 't I ? Listen to that now ! ' ' commented Dick 
irascibly. ' ' I tell you, Peter, you don 't know anything about 
it. You only think you do ; that's all. Say, did Campbell have 
a good play in his pocket or didn't he? You betcher neck 
he did. Did he get it staged? No, you betcher boots he 
didn 't. Don 't talk to me ; I know. ' ' 

By his manner you would have thought he had a standing 
bone to pick with Peter, but this was only his way. It made 
me laugh. 

"Well, the play's the first thing to worry about anyhow," 
I observed. "I wish I were in a position to write one." 

"Why don't you try?" suggested McCord. "You ought to 
be able to do something in that line. I bet you could write 
a good one." 

We fell to discussing dramatists. Peter, with his eye for 
gorgeous effects, costuming and the like, immediately began 
to describe the ballet effects and scenery of a comic opera 
laid in Algeria which was then playing in St. Louis. 

"You ought to go and see that, Dreiser," he urged. "It's 
something wonderful. The effect of the balconies in the first 
act, with the muezzins crying the prayers from the towers 
in the distance, is great. Then the harmony of the color work 
in the stones of the buildings is something exquisite. You 
want to see it." 

I felt myself glowing. This intimate conversation with men 



i 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 137 

of such marked artistic ability, in a room, too, which was 
the reflection of an artist's personality, raised my sense of 
latent ability to the highest point. Not that I felt I was not 
fit to associate with these people — I felt that I was more than 
fit, their equal at every point, conceal it as I might — but it was 
something to come in touch with your own, to find real friends 
to the manner born who were your equals and able to sym- 
pathize with you and appreciate your every mood. A man 
who had found such friends as these so quickly surely need 
never worry. 

" I '11 tell you what I propose to do, Peter, while you people 
are talking," observed Dick. "I propose to go over to 
Frank 's and get a can of beer. Then I '11 read you that story. ' ' 

This proposal to read a story was new to me; I had not 
heard Wood had written one before. I looked at him more 
keenly, and a little flame of envy leaped to life in me. To be 
able to write a short story — or any kind of a story! 

He went to his wardrobe, whence he extracted a medium- 
length black cape of broadcloth, which he threw about his 
shoulders, and a soft hat which he drew rakishly over his 
eyes, then took the tin pail and a piece of money from a 
plate, after the best fashion of the artistic romances of the 
day, and went out. I gazed admiringly after him, touched 
by the romance of it all. That face, waxen, drawn, sensitive, 
with deep burning eyes, and that frail body! That cape! 
That hat ! That plate of coins ! Yes, this was Bohemia ! I 
was now a part of that happy middle world which was supe- 
rior to wealth and poverty. I was in that serene realm where 
moved freely talent, artistic ability, noble thought, ingenious 
action, unhampered by conventional thought and conduct. A 
great man should so live, an artist certainly. These two could 
and did do as they pleased. They were not as others, but 
wise, sensitive, delicately responsive to all that was best in 
life; and as yet the great world was not aware of their 
existence ! 

Wood came back with the beer and then Peter insisted that 
he read us the story. I noticed that there was something 
impish in his manner. He assured me that all of Dick's 



138 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

stories were masterpieces, every one; that time alone was 
required for world-wide recognition. 

Dick picked up a single manuscript from a heap. ' ' I don 't 
want to inflict this on you, Dreiser," he said sweetly and 
apologetically. "We had planned to do this before I knew 
you were coming." 

"That's the way he always talks," put in Peter banter- 
ingly. ' ' Dick loves to stage things. But they 're great stories 
just the same." 

I leaned back, prepared to be thrilled. Dick drew up his 
chair to the table and adjusted a green-shaded gas lamp close 
to the table's edge. He then unfolded his MS. and began 
reading in a low, well-modulated, semi-pathetic voice, which 
seemed very effective in the more sentimental passages. Rev- 
erently I sat and listened. The tale was nothing, a mere daub, 
but, oh, the wonder of it! "Was I not in the presence and 
friendship of artists? Was not this Bohemia? Had I not 
long heard and dreamed of it? Well, then, what difference 
whether the tales were good or bad ? They were by one whom 
I was compelled to admire, an artist, pale, sensitive, recessive, 
one who at the slightest show of inattention or lack of appre- 
ciation might leave me and never see me more. 

I listened to about nine without dying, declaring each and 
every one to be the best I had ever heard — perfect. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

From now on, because of this companionship, my life in 
St. Louis took on a much more cheerful aspect. Hitherto, in 
spite of my work and my natural interest in a strange city, 
I had had intensely gloomy moments. My favorite pastime, 
when I was not out on an assignment or otherwise busy, was 
to walk the streets and view the lives and activities of others, 
not thinking so much how I might advantage myself and 
my affairs as how, for some, the lightning of chance was al- 
ways striking in somewhere and disrupting plans, leaving 
destruction and death in its wake, for others luck or fortune. 
I never was blinded to the gross favoritism practiced by na- 
ture, and this I resented largely, it may be, because it was 
not, or I thought it was not, practiced in my behalf. Later 
in life I began to suspect that a gross favoritism, in regard 
to certain things at least, was being practiced in my behalf. 
I was never without friends, never without some one to do 
me a good turn at a critical moment, never without love and 
the sacrifice of beauty on the part of some one in my behalf, 
never without a certain amount of applause or repute. Was 
I worthy of it? I knew I was not and I felt that the powers 
that make and control life did not care two whoops whether 
I was or not. 

Life, as I had seen and felt from my earliest thinking 
period, used people, sometimes to their advantage, sometimes 
not. Occasionally, as I could see, I was used to my advantage 
as well as to that of some one or something else. Occasionally 
I was used, as I thought, to my disadvantage. Now and then 
when I imagined I was being used most disadvantageously it 
was not so at all, as when for a period I found myself unable 
to write and so compelled to turn to other things — a turning 
which resulted in better material later on. At this time, 
however, I felt that whatever the quality of the gifts handed 

139 



140 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

me or the favors done me, they were as nothing compared 
•J to some; and, again,^ was honestly and sympathetically 
interested in the horrible deprivations inflicted upon others, 
their weaknesses of mind and body, afflictions of all sizes and 
sorts, the way so often they helplessly blundered or were 
driven by internal chemic fires,! as in the case of the fasci- 
nating and beautiful-minded JoTin T. McEnnis, to their own 
undoing. That great idealistic soul, that warm, ebullient 
heart ! 

The opportunity for indulging in these moods was due to 
the fact that I had plenty of time on my hands, that just 
at this time I was more interested in seeing than in reading, 
and that the three principal hotels here, Southern-fashion, 
were most hospitable, equipping their lobbies and even their 
flanking sidewalks with comfortable rocking-chairs where one 
might sit and dream or read or view the passing scene with 
idle or analytic eye. My favorite hotel was the Lindell, rather 
large and not impressive but still successful and popular, 
which stood at the northwest corner of Sixth and Washington 
Avenue. Here I would repair whenever I had a little time 
and rock in peace and watch the crowd of strangers amble to 
and fro. The manager of this hotel, a brisk, rather interest- 
ing and yet job-centered American, seeing me sit about every 
afternoon between four-thirty and six and knowing that I 
was from the Globe, finally began to greet me and ask oc- 
casionally if I did not want to go up to dinner. (How lonely 
and forlorn I must have looked!) On Thanksgiving and 
Christmas afternoons of this my first season there, seeing 
me idle and alone, he asked me to be his guest. I accepted, 
not knowing what else to do. To make it seem like a real 
invitation he came in after I was seated at the table and 
sat down with me for a few minutes. He was so charming 
and the hotel so brisk and crowded that I soon felt at home. 
The daily routine of my work seemed to provide ample proof 
of my suspicions that life was grim and sad. Regularly it 
would be a murder, a suicide, a failure, a defalcation which 
I would be assigned to cover, and on the same day there would 
be an important wedding, a business or political banquet, a 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 141 

ball or a club entertainment of some kind, which would provide 
just the necessary contrast to prove that life is haphazard and 
casual and cruel ; to some lavish, to others niggardly. 

Mere money, often unworthily inherited or made by shabby 
methods, seemed to throw commonplace and even wretched 
souls into such glittering and condescending prominence, in 
this world at least. Many of the business men with whom 
I came in contact were vulgarians, their wives and daughters 
vain and coarse and inconsiderate. I was constantly impressed 
by the airs of the locally prominent, their craving for show 
and pleasure, their insane greed for personal mention, their 
hearty indifference to anything except money plus a keen 
wish to seem to despise it. I remember going one afternoon 
to an imposing residence where some function was in prog- 
ress. I was met by an ostentatious butler who exclaimed 
most nobly: "My dear sir, who sent you here? The Globe 
knows we never give lists to newspaper men. We never admit 
reporters, ' ' and then stiffly closed the door on me. I reported 
as much to the city editor, who remarked meekly, "Well, 
that's all right," and gave me something else to do. But 
the next day a list of the guests at this function was pub- 
lished, and in this paper. I made inquiry of Hartung, who 
said : ' ' Oh, the society editor must have turned that in. These 
society women send in their lists beforehand and then say 
they don't receive reporters." 

Another time it was the residence of the Catholic archbishop 
of St. Louis, a very old but shrewd man whom, so it was 
rumored in newspaper circles, the local priests were plotting 
to make appear infirm and weakminded in order that a 
favorite of theirs might be made coadjutor. I was sent to 
inquire about his health, to see him if possible. At the door 
I was met by a sleek dark priest who inquired what I wished, 
whereupon he assured me that the archbishop was too feeble 
to be seen. 

"That is exactly why I am here," I insisted. "The Globe 
wishes to inform the public of his exact condition. There 
seems to be a belief on the part of some that he is not as 
ill as is given out." 



142 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

"What! You accuse us of concealing something in con- 
nection with the archbishop! This is outrageous!" and he 
firmly shut me out. 

It seemed to me that the straightforward thing would have 
been to let me meet the archbishop. He was a public official, 
the state of whose health was of interest to thousands. But 
no ; official control regulated that. Shortly afterward he was 
declared too feeble to perform his duties and a coadjutor was 
appointed. 

Again I was sent to a fashionable west end hotel to inter- 
view a visiting governor who was attending a reception of 
some kind and who, as we understood, was leaving the next 
day. 

"My dear young fellow," said a functionary connected 
with the entertainment committee, "you cannot do anything 
of the sort. This is no time to be coming around for anything 
of this kind." 

"But he is leaving tomorrow. ..." 

"I cannot help that. You cannot see him now." 

"How about taking him my card and asking him about 
tomorrow ? ' ' 

"No, no, no! I cannot do anything of the sort. You cannot 
see him," and once again I was shunted briskly forth. 

I recall being sent one evening to attend a great public ball 
of some kind — The Veiled Prophets — which was held in the 
general selling-room of the stock exchange at Third and Wal- 
nut, and which followed as a rule some huge autumnal parade. 
The city editor sent me for a general view or introduction or 
pen picture to be used as a lead to the full story, which was 
to be done by others piecemeal. For this occasion I was 
ordered to hire a dress-suit (the first I had ever worn), which 
cost the paper three dollars. I remember being greatly dis- 
turbed by my appearance once I got in it and feeling very 
queer and conspicuous. I was greatly troubled as to what 
sort of impression my garb would make on the various 
members of the staff. As to the latter I was not long in 
doubt. 

"Say, look at our friend in the claw-hammer, will you?" 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 143 

this from Hazard. "He looks like a real society man to 
me!" 

"Usher, you mean," called Bellairs. "Who is he? I don't 
seem to remember him. ' ' 

"Those pants come darned near being a fit, don't they?" 
this from some one who had laid hold of the side lines of the 
trousers. 

I could not make up my mind whether I wanted to fight or 
laugh or whether I was startlingly handsome or a howling 
freak. 

But the thing that weighed on me most was the luxury, 
tawdry enough perhaps to those intimately connected with it, 
which this ball presented, contrasted with my own ignoble 
state. After spending three hours there bustling about exam- 
ining flowers, decorations, getting names, details of costumes, 
and drinking various drinks with officiating floormasters whose 
sole duty appeared to be to look after the press and see that 
they got all details straight, I returned to the office and began 
to pour forth a glowing account of how beautiful it all was, 
how gorgeous, how perfect the women, how marvelous their 
costumes, how gracious and graceful the men, how oriental or 
occidental or Arabic, I forget which, were the decorations, 
outdoing the Arabian Nights or the fabled splendors of the 
Caliphate. Who does not recognize this indiscriminate news- 
paper tosh, poured forth from one end of America to another 
for everything from a farmers' reunion or an I. 0. 0. P. 
Ladies' Day to an Astor or a Vanderbilt wedding? 

As I was writing, my head whirring with the imaginary 
and impossible splendors of the occasion, I was informed by 
my city editor that when I was done I should go to a number 
in South St. Louis where only an hour before a triple or 
quadruple murder had been committed. I was to go out on a 
street-car and if I could not get back in time by street-car 
I was to get a carriage and drive back at breakneck speed in 
order to get the story into the last edition. The great fear 
was that the rival paper, the Republic, would get it or might 
already have it and we would not. And so, my head full of 
pearls, diamonds, silks, satins, laces, a world of flowers and 



144 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

lights, I was now hustled out along the dark, shabby, lonely- 
streets of South St. Louis to the humblest of cottages, in 
the humblest of streets where, among unpainted shacks with 
lean-tos at the back for kitchens, was one which contained this 
story. 

An Irish policeman, silent and indifferent, was already at 
the small dark gate in the dark and silent street, guarding it 
against intruders; another was inside the door, which stood 
partially open, and beyond in the roadway in the darkness, 
their faces all but indistinguishable, a few horrified people. 
A word of explanation and I was admitted. A faint glow from 
a. small smoky glass lamp illuminated the front room darkly. 
It turned out that a very honest, simple, religious and good- 
natured Irish-American of about fifty, who had been working 
by the day in this neighborhood, had recently been taken ill 
with brain fever and had on this night arisen from his fever- 
ish sickbed, seized a flatiron, crept into the front room where 
his wife and two little children slept and brained all three. 
He had then returned to the rear room, where a grown 
daughter slept on a couch beside him, and had first felled her 
with the iron and then cut her throat with a butcher knife. 
Murderous as the deed seemed, and apparently premeditated, 
it was the result of fever. The policeman at the gate in- 
formed me that the father had already been taken to the 
Four Courts and that a hospital ambulance was due any 
moment. 

"But he's out av his mind," he insisted blandly. ''He's 
crazy, sure, or sick av the fever. No man in his right sinses 
would do that. I tried to taalk to him but he couldn't say 
naathin', just mumble like." 

After my grand ball this wretched front room presented a 
sad and ghastly contrast. The house and furniture were very 
poor, the dead wife and children homely and seemingly work- 
■worn. I noticed the dim, smoky flame cast by the lamp, the 
cheap bed awry and stained red, the mother and two children 
lying in limp and painful disorder, the bedding dragged half 
off. It was evident that a struggle had taken place, for a chair 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 145 

and table were upset, the ironing-board thrown down, a bu- 
reau and the bed pushed sidewise. 

Shocked beyond measure, yet with an eye to color and to 
the zest of the public for picturesque details, I examined the 
three rooms with care, the officer in the house following me. 
Together we looked at the utensils in the kitchen, what was in 
the cupboard to eat, what in the closet to wear. I made notes 
of the contents of the rooms, their cheapness, then went to 
the neighbors on either hand to learn if they had heard any- 
thing. Then in a stray owl-car, no carriages being available, 
I hurried to the Four Courts, several miles cityward, to see 
the criminal. I found him, old, pale, sick, thin, walking up 
and down in his small iron cell, plainly out of his mind, a 
picture of hopeless, unconscious misery. His hands trembled 
idly about his mouth; his shabby trousers bagged about his 
shoes; he was unshaven and weak-looking, and all the while 
he mumbled to himself some unintelligible sounds. I tried 
to talk with him but could get nothing. He seemed not 
even to know that I was there, so brain-sick was he. Then I 
questioned the jail attendants, those dull wiseacres of the 
law. Had he talked? Did they think he was sane? With 
the usual acumen and delicacy of this tribe, they were inclined 
to think he was shamming. 

I hurried through dark streets to the office. It was an al- 
most empty reportorial room in which I scribbled my dolorous 
picture. "With the impetuosity of youth and curiosity and 
sorrow and wonder I told it all, the terror, the pity, the 
inexplicability. As I wrote, each page was taken up by Har- 
tung, edited and sent up. Then, having done perhaps a 
column and a half (Bellairs having arrived with various police 
theories) , I was allowed finally to amble out into a dark street 
and seek my miserable little room with its creaky bed, its dirty 
coverlets, its ragged carpets and stained walls. Nevertheless, 
I lay down with a kind of high pride and satisfaction in 
my story of the murder and my description of the ball, and 
with my life in consequence ! I was not so bad. I was getting 
along. I must be thought an exceptional man to be picked for 
two such difficult tasks in the same evening. Life itself was 



146 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

not so bad; it was just higgledy-piggledy, catch-as-catch-can, 
that was all. If one were clever, like myself, it was all right. 
Next morning, when I reached the office, McCord and Hazard 
and some others pronounced my stuff "pretty good," and 
I was beside myself with glee. I strolled about as though I 
owned the earth, pretending simplicity and humility but ac- 
tually believing that I was the finest ever, that no one could 
outdo me at this game of reporting. 



CHAPTER XXV 

Things relatively interesting, contrasts nearly as sharp and 
as well calculated to cause one to meditate on the wonder, the 
beauty, the uncertainty, the indifference, the cruelty and the 
rank favoritism of life, were daily if not hourly put before 
me. Now it would be some such murder as this or a social 
scandal of some kind, often of a gross and revolting char- 
acter, in some ultra-respectable neighborhood, or a suicide 
of peculiarly sad or grim character. Or, again, it would be 
a fine piece of chicane, as when a certain ' ' board-and-f eed " 
stable owner of the west end, about to lose his property 
beeause of poor business and anxious to save himself by 
securing the insurance, set fire to the stable and destroyed 
seventeen healthy horses as well as one stable attendant and 
"got away with it," legally anyhow. His plan had probably 
been to save the horses and the man, but the plan miscarried. 
I gathered as much from him when I interviewed him. I put 
some pertinent questions at him but could get no admissions 
on which to base a charge. He was a shrewd, calculating, 
commercial type, vigorous and semi-savage. He evaded me 
blandly and I had to write the fire up as a sad accident, there- 
by aiding him to get his insurance, the while I was convinced 
that he was guilty, a hard-hearted scoundrel. 

Another thing that I sensed very clearly at this time was 
the fact that the average newspaper reporter was a far better 
detective in his way than the legitimate official detective, and 
not nearly so well paid. The average so-called ' ' headquarters 
man, ' ' was a loathsome thing, as low in his ideas and methods 
as the lowest criminal he was set to trap. The criminal was 
at least shrewd and dynamic enough to plot and execute a 
crime, whereas the detective had no brains at all, merely a 
low kind of cunning. Often red-headed, freckled, with big 
hands and feet, store clothes, squeaky shoes — why does such a 

147 



148 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

picture of the detective coine back to me? Pop-eyed, with a 
ridiculous air of mystery and profundity in matters requiring 
neither, dirty, offensive, fish-eyed and merciless, the detectives 
floundered about in different cases without a grain of humor ; 
whereas the average reporter was, by contrast anyhow, intelli- 
gent or shrewd, cleanly nearly always, if at times a little 
slouchy, inclined to drink and sport perhaps but genial, often 
gentlemanly, a fascinating story-teller, a keen psychologist 
(nearly always one of the best), frequently well read, humor- 
ous, sympathetic, amusing or gloomy as the case might be, 
but generally to be relied upon in such emergencies for truly 
skillful work. Naturally there was some enmity between the 
two, a contempt on the part of the newspaper man for the 
detective, a fear and dislike and secret opposition on the 
part of the detective. The reporter would go forth on a 
mystifying case and as a rule, given time enough, would solve 
it, whereas the police detectives would be tramping about 
often trailing the reporters, reading the newspapers to dis- 
cover what had been discovered, and then, when the work had 
been done and the true clew furnished, would step forward at 
the grand moment to do the arresting and get their pictures 
and names in the papers. The detectives were constantly 
playing into the hands of the police reporters in unimportant 
matters during periods between great cases, doing them little 
favors, helping them in small cases, in order that when a 
big case came along they might have favors done unto them. 
The most important of all these favors, of course, was that 
of seeing that their names were mentioned in the papers as 
being engaged in salving a mystery or having done thus and 
so, when in all likelihood some newspaper man had done it. 

Sometimes the tip as to where the criminal was likely to be 
found would be furnished by the papers and later credited 
to the police. Sometimes the newspaper men would lash the 
police, sometimes flatter them, but always they were seeking 
to make the police aid them to get various necessary things 
done, and not always succeeding. Sometimes the police were 
hand-in-glove with certain crooks or evil-doers, and you could 
all but prove it, but until you did so, and sometimes after- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 149 

ward, they were stubborn and would defy you and the papers. 
But not for long. They loved publicity too much ; offer them 
sufficient publicity, and they would act. It was nearly always 
my experience that the newspapers, which meant the reporters 
of course plus an efficient city editor and possibly a managing 
editor, would be the first to worm out the psychology of any 
given case and then point an almost unerring finger at the 
criminal; then the police or detectives would come in and do 
the arresting and get the credit. 

Another thing that impressed me greatly at this time was 
the kaleidoscopic character of newspaper work, which, in its 
personal significance to me, cannot be too much emphasized. 
As I have said, one day it would be a crime of a lurid or sen- 
sational character that would arrest and compel me to think, 
and the same day, within the hour perhaps, it would be a lec- 
turer or religionist with some finespun theory of life, some 
theosophist like Annie Besant, who in passing through St. 
Louis on a lecture tour would be at one of the best hotels, 
usually the Southern, talking transmigration and Nirvana. 
Again, it would be some mountebank or quack of a low order — 
a spiritualist, let us say, of the Eva Fay stripe, or a mind- 
reader like Bishop, or a third-rate religionist like the Eever- 
end Sam Jones, who was then in his heyday preaching un- 
adulterated hell, or the arrival of a prize-fighter-actor like 
John L. Sullivan, then only recently defeated by Corbett, or 
a novelist of the quack order, such as Hall Caine. 

And there were distinguished individuals, including such 
excellent lecturers as Henry Watterson and Henry M. Stan- 
ley, or a musician like Paderewski, or a scientist of the stand- 
ing of Nikola Tesla. I was sent to interview my share of 
these, to get their views on something — anything or nothing 
really, for my city editor, Mr. Mitchell, seemed at times a 
little cloudy as to their significance, and certainly I had no 
clear insight into what most of them stood for. I wondered, 
guessed, made vague stabs at what I thought they represented, 
and in the main took them seriously enough. My favorite ques- 
tion was what did they think of life, its meaning, since this 
was uppermost in my mind at the time, and I think I asked it 



150 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

of every one of them, from John L. Sullivan to Annie Besant. 
And what a jangle of doctrines ! What a noble burst of ideas ! 
Annie Besant, in a room at the Southern delicately scented 
with flowers, arrayed in a cool silken gray dress, informed 
me that the age was material, that wealth and show were 
an illusion based on nothing at all (I wrote that down without 
understanding what she meant), that the Hindu Swamis had 
long since solved all this seeming mystery of living, Madame 
Blavatsky being the most recent and the greatest apostle of 
wisdom in this matter, and that the great thing to do in this 
world or the next was to improve oneself spiritually and so 
eventually attain to Nirvana, nothingness — a word I had 
to look up afterward. (When I told Dick Wood about her he 
seemed greatly impressed and said: "Oh, there's more to 
that stuff than you think, Dreiser. You're just not up on all 
that yet. These mystics see more than we think they do," 
and he looked very wise.) 

And Henry Watterson — imagine me at the age of twenty- 
one trying to interview him when he was in the heyday of 
his fame and mental powers! Short, stocky, with a pro- 
tuberant belly, slightly gray hair, gruff and simple in his 
manner and joyously secure in his fame (he had just the 
preceding summer said that Cleveland, Democratic candidate 
of the hour and later elected, was certain to "walk up an 
alley to a slaughter-house and an open grave," and had of 
course seen his prediction fail), he was convinced that the 
country was in bad hands, not likely to go to the "demnition 
bow-wows" as yet but in for a bad corporation-materialistic 
spell. And when I asked him what he thought of life 

"My son, when you get as old as I am you probably won't 
think so much of it, and you won't be to blame. It's good 
enough in its way, but it's a damned ticklish business. You 
may say that Henry Watterson said that if you like. Do the 
best you can, and don't crowd the other fellow too hard, and 
you'll come out as well as anybody, I suppose." 

And then John L. Sullivan, raw, red-faced, big-fisted, broad- 
shouldered, drunken, with gaudy waistcoat and tie, and rings 
and pins set with enormous diamonds and rubies — what an 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 151 

impression he made ! Surrounded by local sports and politi- 
cians of the most rubicund and degraded character (he was a 
great favorite with them), he seemed to me, sitting in his 
suite at the Lindell, to be the apotheosis of the humorously 
gross and vigorous and material. Cigar boxes, champagne 
buckets, decanters, beer bottles, overcoats, collars and shirts 
littered the floor, and lolling back in the midst of it all in 
ease and splendor his very great self, a sort of prize-fighting 
J. P. Morgan. 

' ' Aw, haw ! haw ! haw ! " I can hear him even now when I 
asked him my favorite question about life, his plans, the value 
of exercise ( ! ) , etc. • ' He wants to know about exercise ! 
You're all right, young fella, kinda slim, but you'll do. Sit 
down and have some champagne. Have a cigar. Give 'im 
some cigars, George. These young newspaper men are all 
all right to me. I'm for 'em. Exercise? What I think? 
Haw ! haw i Write any damned thing yuh please, young fella, 
and say that John L. Sullivan said so. That 's good enough for 
me. If they don't believe it bring it back here and I'll sign 
it for yuh. But I know it'll be all right, and I won't stop 
to read it neither. That suit yuh? Well, all right. Now 
have some more champagne and don't say I didn't treat yuh 
right, 'cause I did. I 'm ex-champion of the world, defeated by 
that little dude from California, but I'm still John L. Sulli- 
van — ain't that right? Haw! haw! They can't take that 
away from me, can they? Haw! haw! Have some more 
champagne, boy." 

I adored him. I would have written anything he asked 
me to write. I got up the very best article I could and pub- 
lished it, and was told afterward that it was fine. 

Another thing that interested me about newspaper work 
was its pagan or unmoral character, as contrasted with the 
heavy religionistic and moralistic point of view seemingly 
prevailing in the editorial office proper (the editorial page, 
of course), as well as the world outside. While the editorial 
office might be preparing the most flowery moralistic or reli- 
gionistic editorials regarding the worth of man, the value 
of progress, character, religion, morality, the sanctity of the 



152 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

home, charity and the like, the business office and news 
rooms were concerned with no such fine theories. The business 
office was all business, with little or no thought of anything 
save success, and in the city news room the mask was off and 
life was handled in a rough-and-ready manner, without gloves 
and in a catch-as-catch-can fashion. Pretense did not go 
here. Innate honesty on the part of any one was not prob- 
able. Charity was a business with something in it for some- 
body. Morality was in the main for public consumption only. 
' ' Get the news ! Get the news ! ' ' — that was the great cry in 
the city editorial room. "Don't worry much over how you 
get it, but get it, and don't come back without it! Don't 
fall down ! Don 't let the other newspapers skin us — that is, 
if you value your job ! And write — and write well. If any 
other paper writes it better than you do you're beaten and 
might as well resign." The public must be entertained by 
the writing of reporters. 

But the methods and the effrontery and the callousness 
necessary at times for the gathering of news — what a shock 
even though one realized that it was conditional with life 
itself ! At most times one needed to be hard, cold, Jesuitical. 
For instance, one of the problems that troubled me most, and 
to which there was no solution save to act jesuitically or get 
out, was how to get the facts from a man or woman suspected 
of some misdeed or error without letting him know that you 
were so doing. In the main, if you wanted facts of any 
kind, especially in connection with the suspected, you did 
not dare tell them that you came as an enemy or were bent 
on exposing them. One had to approach all, even the worst 
and most degraded, as a friend and pretend an interest, per- 
haps even a sympathy one did not feel, to apply the oil of 
flattery to the soul. To do less than this was to lose the 
news, and while a city editor might readily forgive any 
form of trickery he would never forgive failure. Cheat and 
win and you were all right ; be honest and lose and you were 
fired. To appear wise when you were ignorant, dull when 
you were not, disinterested when you were interested, brutal 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 153 

or severe when you might be just the reverse — these were 
the essential tricks of the trade. 

And I, being sent out every day and loafing about the 
corridors of the various hotels at different times, soon en- 
countered other newspaper men who were as shrewd and 
wily as ferrets, who had apparently but one motive in life : 
to trim their fellow newspaper men in the matter of news, or 
the public which provided the news. There being only two 
morning papers here (the Globe and the Republic), the re- 
porters of each loved the others not, even when personally 
they were inclined to be friendly. They did not dare permit 
their personal likes to affect their work. It was every man 
for himself. Meet a reporter of the Republic or the Globe 
on a story: he might be friendly enough but he would tell 
you nothing. He wished either to shun you or worm your 
facts out of you. Meet him in the lobby of the La Clede, where 
by common consent, winter or summer, most seemed to gather, 
or at the corner drugstore outside, and each would be friendly 
with the other, trading tales of life, going together to a saloon 
for a drink or to the "beanery," a famous eating-place on 
Chestnut between Fourth and Broadway, perhaps borrowing 
a dime, a quarter or a dollar until pay day — but never re- 
paying with news or tips; quite the reverse, as I soon found. 
One had to keep an absolutely close mouth as to all one might 
be doing. 

The counsel of all of these men was to get the news in 
any way possible, by hook or by crook, and to lose no time 
in theorizing about it. If a document was lying on an offi- 
cial's table, for instance, and you wanted to see it and could 
not persuade him to give it to you — well, if he turned his 
back it was good business to take it, or at least read it. If a 
photograph was desired and the one concerned would not 
give it and you saw it somewhere, take it of course and let 
them complain afterward if they would; your city editor 
was supposed to protect you in such matters. You might 
know of certain conditions of which a public official was not 
aware and the knowledge of which would cause him to talk 
in one way, whereas lack of that knowledge would cause him 



154 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to talk in another. Personally you might think it your duty 
to tell him, but as a newspaper man you could not. It was 
your duty to your paper to sacrifice him. If you didn 't some 
one else would. I was not long in learning all this and more, 
and although I understood the necessity I sometimes resented 
having to do it. There were times when I wanted to treat 
people better than I did or could. Sometimes I told myself 
that I was better in this respect than other newspaper men; 
but when the test came I found that I was like the others, 
as eager to get the news. Something akin to a dog's lust of 
the chase would in critical moments seize upon me and in 
my eagerness to win a newspaper battle I would forget or 
ignore nearly every tenet of fairness and get it. Then, vic- 
torious, I might sigh over the sadness of it all and decide that 
I was going to get out of the business — as I eventually did t 
and for very much this reason — but at the time I was weak 
or practical enough. 

One afternoon I was sent to interview the current Demo- 
cratic candidate for mayor, an amiable soul who conducted 
a wholesale harness business and who was supposed to have 
an excellent chance of being elected. The city had long been 
sick of Republican misrule, or so our office seemed to think. 
When I entered his place he was in the front part of the 
store discussing with several friends or politicians the char- 
acter of St. Louis, its political and social backwardness, its 
narrowness, slowness and the like, and for some reason, pos- 
sibly due to the personality of his friends, he was very severe. 
Local religionists, among others, came in for a good drubbing. 
I did not know him but for some unexplainable reason I as- 
sumed at once that the man talking was the candidate. Again, 
I instinctively knew that if what he was saying were published 
it would create a sensation. The lust of the hunter stalking a 
wild animal immediately took possession of me. What a 
beat, to take down what this man was saying! What a stir 
it would make ! Without seeming to want anything in par- 
ticular, I stood by a showcase and examined the articles with- 
in. Soon he finished his tirade and came to me. 

"Well, sir?" 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 155 

"I'm from the Globe,'* I said. "I want to ask you " 

and I asked him some questions. 

"When he heard that I was from the Globe he became visibly- 
excited. 

"Did you hear what I was saying just now?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Well, you know that I was not speaking for publi- 
cation." . . . 

"Yes, I know." 

"And you're not to forget that." 

"I understand." 

Just the same I returned to the office and wrote up the 
incident just as it had occurred. My city editor took it, 
glanced over it, and departed for the front office. I could tell 
by his manner that he was excited. The next day it was pub- 
lished in all its crude reality, and the man was ruined politi- 
cally. There were furious denials in the rival Democratic 
papers. A lying reporter was denounced, not only by Mr. 
Bannerman, the candidate, but by all the other papers edi- 
torially. At once I was called to the front office to explain 
to Mr. McCullagh, which I did in detail. "He said it all, 
did he ? " he asked, and I insisted that he had. ' ' I know it 's 
true," he said, "for other people have told me that he has 
said the same things before. ' ' 

Next day there was a defiant editorial in the Globe defend- 
ing me, my truthfulness, the fact that the truth of the inter- 
view was substantiated by previous words and deeds of the 
candidate. Various editors on the paper came forward to 
congratulate me, to tell me what a beat I had made; but 
to tell the truth I felt shamefaced, dishonest, unkind. I was 
an eavesdropper. I had taken an unfair advantage, and I 
knew it. Still, something in me made me feel that I was 
fortunate. As a reporter I had done the paper a great service. 
My editor-in-chief, as I could see, appreciated it. No other 
immediate personal reward came to me, but I felt that I had 
strengthened my standing here a little. Yet for that I had 
killed that man politically. Youth, zest, life, the love of the 
chase — that is all that explains it to me now. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

My standing as a local newspaper man seemed to grow by 
leaps and bounds — I am not exaggerating. Certain almost 
fortuitous events (how often they have occurred in my life!) 
seemed to assist me, far above my willing or even my dreams. 
Thus, one morning I had come down to the Globe city room to 
get something, a paper or a book I had left, before going to my 
late breakfast, when a tall, broad-shouldered man, wearing a 
slouch hat and looking much like the typical Kentucky colonel, 
hurried into the office and exclaimed : 

"Is the city editor here?" 

"He isn't down yet," I replied. "Anything I can do for 
you?" 

' * I just stopped to tell you there 's a big wreck on the road 
up here near Alton. I saw it from the train as I passed 
coming down from Chicago. A half-dozen cars are burning. 
If you people get a man up there right away you can get a 
big lead on this." 

I grabbed a piece of paper, for I felt instinctively that this 
was important. Some one ought to attend to it right away. 
I looked around to see if there was any one to appeal to, but 
there was no one. 

"What did you say the name of the place was?" I in- 
quired. 

' ' Wann, ' ' relied the stranger, ' ' right near Alton. You can 't 
miss it. Better get somebody up there quick. I think it's 
something big. I know how important these things are to 
you newspaper boys: I used to be one myself, and I owe the 
Globe a few good turns anyhow." He smiled and bustled 
out. 

I did not wait to see the city editor. I felt that I was 
taking a big risk, going out without orders, but I also felt 
that something terrible had happened and that the occasion 

156 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 157 

warranted it. I had never seen a big wreck. It must be won- 
derful. The newspapers always gave them so much space. I 
wrote a note to the city editor explaining that the wreck 
was reported to be a great one and added that I felt it to be 
my duty to go at once. Perhaps he had better send an artist 
after me — imagine me advising him ! 

On the way to the depot I thought of what I must do : tele- 
graph for an artist if the wreck was really important, and 
then get my story and get back. It was over an hour's run. 
I got off at the nearest station to the wreck and walked the 
remaining distance, which was a little more than a mile. As 
I neared it I saw a crowd of people gathered about what was 
evidently the smoldering embers of a train, and on the same 
track, not more than a hundred feet away, were three oil-tank 
cars, those evidently into which the passenger train had 
crashed. These cars were also surrounded by a crowd, citi- 
zens of nearby towns, as it proved, who were staring at them 
as the fire blazed about them. As I learned later, a fourth 
oil-tank car had been smashed and the contents had poured 
out about these others of the oil group as well as the passenger 
train itself. The oil had taken fire and consumed the train, 
although no people were killed. 

The significance of the scene had not yet quite dawned upon 
me, however, when for the second time in my life I was privi- 
leged to behold one of those terrible catastrophes which it is 
given to few of us to see. The oil-tank cars about which the 
crowd was gathered, having become overheated by the burning 
oil beneath, exploded all at once with a muffled report which 
to me (I was no more than fifteen hundred feet away) sounded 
like a deep breath exhaled by some powerful man. The earth 
trembled, the heavens instantly appeared to be surcharged 
with flame. The crowd, which only a moment before I had 
seen solidly massed about the cars, was now hurled back in 
confusion, and I beheld men running, some toward me, 
some from me, their bodies on fire or being momentarily ig- 
nited. I saw flames descending toward me, long, red, licking 
things, and realizing the danger I turned and in a panic ran 
as fast as I could, never stopping until I deemed myself at a 



158 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

safe distance. Then I halted and gazed back, hearing at the 
same time a chorus of pitiful wails and screams which tore 
my heart. 

Death is here, I said to myself. I am witnessing a real 
tragedy, a horror. The part of the great mysterious force 
which makes and unmakes our visible scene is here and now 
magnificently operative. But, first of all, I was a newspaper 
man ; I must report this, run to it, not away. 

I saw dashing toward me a man whose face I could not 
make out clearly, for at times it was partially covered by his 
hands, which seemed aflame, at other times the hands waved 
in the air like flails, and were burning. His body was being 
consumed by a rosy flame which partially enveloped him. His 
face, whenever it became visible as he moved his hands to and 
fro, was screwed into a horrible grimace. Unconscious of 
me as he ran, he dashed like a fiery force to the low ditch 
which paralleled the railroad, where he rolled and twisted like 
a worm. 

I could scarcely believe my eyes or my senses. My hair rose 
on end. My hands twitched convulsively. I ran forward, 
pulling off my coat, and threw it over him to smother the 
spots of flame — but it was of no use — my coat began to burn. 
With my bare hands I tore grass and earth from the ditch 
and piled them upon the sufferer. For the moment I was 
beside myself with terror and misery and grief. Tears came 
to my eyes and I choked with the sense of helpless misery. 
When I saw my own coat burning I snatched it away and 
stamped the fire out. 

The man was burned beyond recovery. The oil had evi- 
dently fallen in a mass upon the back of his head and 
shoulders and back and legs. It had burnt his clothes and hair 
and cooked the skin. His hands were scorched black, as well 
as his neck and ears and face. Finally he ceased to struggle 
and lay still, groaning heavily but unconscious. He was 
alive, but that was all. 

Oppressed by the horror of it I looked about for help, but 
seeing many others in the same plight I realized the futility of 
further labor here. I could do nothing more. I had stopped 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 159 

the flames in part, the man 's rolling in the ditch had done the 
rest, but to what end! Hope of life was ridiculous, I could 
see that plainly. I turned, like a soldier in battle, and looked 
after the rest of the people. 

To this hour I can see it all — some running over the fields in 
the distance away from the now entirely exploded tanks, others 
approaching the fallen victims. A house a little beyond the 
wreck was burning. A small village, not a thousand feet away, 
was blazing in spots, bits of oil having fallen upon the roofs. 
People were running hither and thither like ants, bending over 
and examining prostrate forms. 

My first idea of course when I recovered my senses was that 
I must get in touch with my newspaper and get it to send an 
artist — "Wood, if possible — and then get the news. These 
people here would do as much for the injured as I could. "Why 
waste my newspaper's time on them? I ran to a little road- 
crossing telegraph station a few hundred feet farther on where 
I asked the agent what was being done. 

"I've sent for a wreck-train," he replied excitedly. "I've 
telegraphed the Alton General Hospital. There ought to be a 
train and doctor here pretty soon, any minute now." He 
looked at his watch. ' ' "What more can I do ? " 

"Have you any idea how many are killed?" 

' ' I don 't know. You can see for yourself, can 't you ? ' ' 

""Will you take a message to the Globe-Democrat f I want to 
send for an artist." 

"I can't be bothered with anything like that now," he re- 
plied roughly. I felt that an instant antagonism and caution 
enveloped him. He hurried away. 

"How am I to do this?" I thought, and then I ran, studying 
and aiding with the victims where aid seemed of the slightest 
use, wondering how I should ever be able to report all this. 
and awaiting the arrival of the hospital and wrecking train. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

It was not long before the wreck-train arrived, a thing of 
flat cars, box-cars and cabooses of an old pattern, with hospital 
cots made ready en route, and a number of doctors and nurses 
who scrambled out with the air and authority of those used to 
scenes of this kind. Meanwhile I had been wondering how 
long it would be before the wreck-train would arrive and had 
set about getting my information before the doctors and au- 
thorities were on the scene, when it might not be so easy. I 
knew that names of the injured and their condition were most 
important, and I ran from one to another of the groups that 
had formed here and there over one dying or dead, asking 
them who it was, where he lived, what his occupation was 
(curiously, there were no women), and how he came to be at 
the scene of the wreck. Some, I found, were passengers, 
some residents of the nearby village of Wann or Alton who 
had hurried over to see the wreck. Most of the passengers 
had gone on a train provided for them. 

I had a hard enough time getting information, even from 
those who were able to talk. Citizens from the nearby town 
and those who had not been injured were too much fright- 
ened by the catastrophe or were lending a hand to do what 
they could . . . they were not interested in a reporter or his 
needs. A group carrying the injured to the platform resented 
my intrusion, and others searching the meadows for those who 
had run far away until they fell were too busy to bother with 
me. Still I pressed on. I went from one to another asking 
who they were, receiving in some cases mumbled replies, in 
others merely groans. With those laid out on the platform 
awaiting the arrival of the wreck-train I did not have so much 
trouble: they were helpless and there were none to attend 
them. 

"Oh, can't you let me alone!" exclaimed one man whose 

160 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 161 

face was a black crust. " Can't you see I'm dying?" 

"Isn't there some one who will want to know?" I asked 
softly. It struck me all at once that this was a duty these 
people owed to everybody, their families and friends included. 

"You're right," said the man with cracked lips, after a 
long silence, and he gave his name and an account of his 
experiences. 

I went to others and to each who was able to understand I 
put the same question. It won me the toleration of those, who 
were watching me. All except the station agent seemed to 
see that I was entitled to do this, and he could have been 
soothed with a bribe if I had thought of it. 

As I have said, however, once the wreck-train rolled in sur- 
geons and nurses leaped down, and men brought litters to 
carry away the wounded. In a moment the scene changed 3 
the authorities of the road turned a frowning face upon in- 
quiry and I was only too glad that I had thought to make my 
inquiries early. However, I managed in the excitement to 
install myself in the train just as it was leaving so as to reach 
Alton with the injured and dead and witness the transfer. 
Some died en route, others moaned in a soul-racking way. I 
was beside myself with pity and excitement, and yet I could 
think only of the manner in which I would describe, describe, 
describe, once the time came. Just now I scarcely dared to 
make notes. 

At Alton the scene transferred itself gradually to the Alton 
General Hospital, where in spite of the protests of railroad offi- 
cials I demanded as my right that I be allowed to enter and 
was finally admitted. Once in the hospital I completed my 
canvass, being now assisted by doctors and nurses, who seemed 
to like my appearance and to respect my calling, possibly be- 
cause they saw themselves mentioned in the morning paper. 
Having interviewed every injured man, obtaining his name 
and address where possible, I finally went out, and at the door 
encountered a great throng of people, men, women and chil- 
dren, who were weeping and clamoring for information. One 
glance, and I realized for all time what these tragedies of the 
world really mean to those dependent. The white drawn faces, 



162 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the liquid appealing eyes, tragedy written in large human 
characters. 

"Do you know whether my John is in there?" cried one 
woman. 

"Your John?" I replied sympathetically. "Will you tell 
me who your John is ? " 

"John Taylor. He works on that road. He was over 
there." 

"Wait a moment," I said, reaching down in my pocket for 
my pad and reading the names. "No, he isn't here." 

The woman heaved a great sigh. 

Others now crowded about me. In a moment I was the 
center of a clamoring throng. All wanted to know, each be- 
fore the other. 

"Wait a moment," I said, as an inspiration seized me. I 
raised my hand, and a silence fell over the little group. 

"You people want to know who is injured," I called. "I 
have a list here which I made over at the wreck and here. It 
is almost complete. If you will be quiet I will read it. ' ' 

A hush fell over the crowd. I stepped to one side, where 
was a broad balustrade, mounted it and held up my paper. 

"Edward Reeves," I began, "224 South Elm Street, Alton. 
Arms, legs and face seriously burned. He may die." 

" Oh ! " came a cry from a woman in the crowd. 

I decided to not say whether any one was seriously injured. 

"Charles Wingate, 415 North Tenth Street, St. Louis." 

No voice answered this. 

"Richard Shortwood, 193 Thomas Street, Alton." 

No answer. 

I read on down the list of forty or more, and at each name 
there was a stir and in some instances cries. As I stepped 
down two or three people drew near and thanked me. A flush 
of gratification swept over me. For once I felt that I had done 
something of which I could honestly be proud. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent in gathering outside 
details. I hunted up the local paper, which was getting out 
an extra, and got permission to read its earlier account. I 
went to the depot to see how the trains ran, and by accident 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 163 

ran into Wood. In spite of my inability to send a telegram 
the city editor had seen fit to take my advice and send him. 
He was intensely wrought up over how to illustrate it all, and 
I am satisfied that my description of what had occurred did not 
ease him much. I accompanied him back to the hospital to 
see if there was anything there he wished to illustrate, and 
then described to him the horror as I saw it. Together we 
visited the morgue of the hospital, where already fourteen 
naked bodies had been laid out in a row, bodies from which 
the flames had eaten great patches of skin, and I saw that there 
was nothing now by which they could be identified. "Who 
were they ? I asked myself. What had they been, done ? The 
nothingness of man! They looked so commonplace, so unim- 
portant, so like dead flies or beetles. Curiously enough, the 
burns which had killed them seemed in some cases pitifully 
small, little patches cut out of the skin as if by a pair of shears, 
revealing the raw muscles beneath. All those dead were 
stark naked, men who had been alive and curiously gaping 
only two or three hours before. For once Dick was hushed ; 
he did not theorize or pretend ; he was silent, pale. "It's hell, 
I tell you, ' ' was all he said. 

On the way back on the train I wrote. In my eagerness to 
give a full account I impressed the services of Dick, who 
wrote for me such phases of the thing as he had seen. At the 
office I reported briefly to Mitchell, giving that solemn sala- 
mander a short account of what had occurred. He told me 
to write it at full length, as much as I pleased. It was 
about seven in the evening when we reached the office, and 
at eleven I was still writing and not nearly through. I 
asked Hartung to look out for some food for me about mid- 
night, and then went on with my work. By that time the 
whole paper had become aware of the importance of the thing 
I was doing ; I was surrounded and observed at times by gos- 
sips and representatives of out-of-town newspapers, who had 
come here to get transcripts of the tale. The telegraph editor 
came in from time to time to get additional pages of what I 
was writing in order to answer inquiries, and told me he 
thought it was fine. The night editor called to ask questions, 



164 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and the reporters present sat about and eyed me curiously. I 
was a lion for once. The realization of my importance set 
me up. I wrote with vim, vanity, a fine frenzy. 

By one o'clock I was through. Then after it was all over 
the other reporters and newspaper men gathered about me — 
Hazard, Bellairs, Benson, Hartung, David the railroad man, 
and several others. 

"This is going to be a great beat for you," said Hazard 
generously. "We've got the Post licked, all right. They 
didn't hear of it until three o'clock this afternoon, but they 
sent five men out there and two artists. But the best they can 
have is a cold account. You saw it." 

"That's right," echoed Bellairs. "You've got 'em licked. 
That'll tickle Mac, all right. He loves to beat the other 
Sunday papers. ' ' It was Saturday night. 

"Tobe's tickled sick," confided Hartung cautiously. 
"You've saved his bacon. He hates a big story because he's 
always afraid he won't cover it right and it always worries 
him, but he knows you've got 'em beat. McCullagh'll give 
him credit for it, all right." 

' ' Oh, that big stiff ! " I said scornfully, referring to Tobias. 

"Something always saves that big stiff," said Hazard bit- 
terly. ' ' He plays in luck, by George ! He hasn 't any brains. ' ' 

I went in to report to my superior after a time, and told 
him very humbly that I thought I had written all I could down 
here but that there was considerable more up there which I 
was sure should be personally covered by me and that I ought 
to go back. 

' ' Very well, ' ' he replied gruffly. ' ' But don 't overdo it. ' ' 

"The big stiff!" I thought as I went out. 

That night I stayed at a downtown hotel, since I was now 
charging everything to the paper and wanted to be called 
early, and after a feverish sleep arose at six and started out 
again. I was as excited and cheerful as though I had sud- 
denly become a millionaire. I stopped at the nearest corner 
and bought a Globe, a Republic, and a Post-Dispatch, and 
proceeded to contrast the various accounts, scanning the col- 
umns to see how much my stuff made and theirs, and measur- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 165 

ing the atmosphere and quality. To me, of course, mine 
seemed infinitely the best. There it was, occupying the whole 
front page, with cuts, and nearly all of the second page, with 
cuts! I could hardly believe my eyes. Dick's illustrations 
were atrocious, a mess, no spirit or meaning to them, just 
great blotches of weird machinery and queer figures. He had 
lost himself in an effort to make a picture of the original 
crumpling wreck, and he had done it very badly. At once, 
and for the first time, he began to diminish as an artist in 
my estimation. "Why, this doesn't look anything like it at 
all ! He hasn 't drawn what I would have drawn, ' ' and I be- 
gan to see or suspect that art might mean something be- 
sides clothes and manner. "Why didn't he show those dead 
men, that crowd clamoring about the main entrance of the 
hospital?" The illustrations in the other papers seemed 
much better. 

As for myself, I saw no least flaw in my work. It was all 
all right, especially the amount of space given me. Splendid ! 
"My!" I said to myself vainly, "to think I should have 
written all this, and single-handed, between the hours of 
five and midnight!" It seemed astonishing, a fine perform- 
ance. I picked out the most striking passages first and read 
them, my throat swelling and contracting uncomfortably, my 
heart beating proudly, and then I went over the whole of the 
article word by word. To me in my vain mood|it read amaz- 
ingly well. I felt that it was full of fire and pathos and done 
in the right way, with facts and color. And, to cap it all 
and fill my cup of satisfaction to the brim, this same paper 
contained an editorial calling attention to the facts that the 
Globe had triumphed in the matter of reporting this story and 
that the skill of the Globe-Democrat could always be counted 
upon in a crisis like this to handle such things correctly, and 
commiserating the other poor journals on their helplessness 
when faced by such trying circumstances. The Globe was al- 
ways best and first, according to this statement. I felt that 
at last I had justified the opinion of the editor-in-chief in 
sending for me. 

Bursting with vanity, I returned to Alton. Despite the woes 



166 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

of others I could not help glorying in the fact that nearly 
the whole city, a good part of it anyhow, must be reading my 
account of the wreck. It was anonymous, of course, and they 
could not know who had done it, but just the same I had 
done it whether they knew it or not and I exulted. This was 
the chance, apparently, that I had been longing for, and I 
had not failed. 

This second day at Alton was not so important as I had 
fancied it might be, but it had its phases. On my arrival I 
took one more look at the morgue, where by then thirty-one 
dead bodies were laid out in a row, and then began to look 
after those who were likely to recover. I visited some of the 
families of the afflicted, who talked of damage suits. At my 
leisure I wrote a full account of just how the case stood, and 
wired it. I felt that to finish the thing properly I should stay 
until another day, which really was not necessary, and de- 
cided to do so without consulting my editor. 

But by nightfall, after my copy had been filed, I realized 
my mistake, for I received a telegram to return. The local 
correspondent could attend to the remaining details. On 
the way back I began to feel a qualm of conscience in re- 
gard to my conduct. I had been taking a great deal for 
granted, as I knew, in thus attempting to act without orders. 
My city editor might think I was getting a " swelled head," 
as no doubt I was, and so complain to McCullagh. I knew 
he did not like me, and this gave him a good excuse to com- 
plain. Besides, my second day's story, now that it was gone, 
did not seem to be so important ; I might as well have carried 
it in and saved the expense of telegraphing it. I felt that 
I had failed in this ; also that mature consideration might 
decide that I had failed on the first story also. I began to 
think that by my own attitude I had worked up all the ex- 
citement in the office that Saturday night and that my editor- 
in-chief would realize it now and so be disappointed in me. 
Suppose, I thought, when I reached the office McCullagh were 
dissatisfied and should fire me — then what? Where would I 
go, where get another job as good as this ? I thought of my 
various follies and my past work here. Perhaps with this 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 167 

last error my sins were now to find me out. ' ' Pride goeth be- 
fore destruction," I quoted, "and a haughty spirit before 
a fall." 

By eight o'clock, when I reached the office, I was thor- 
oughly depressed and hurried in, expecting the worst. Of 
course the train had been late — had to be on this occasion ! — 
and I did not reach the office in time to take an evening as- 
signment. Mitchell was out, which left me nothing to do 
but worry. Only Hartung was there, and he seemed rather 
glum. According to him, Tobe had seemed dissatisfied with 
my wishing to stay up there. Why had I been so bold, I 
asked myself, so silly, so self -hypnotized ? I took up an 
evening paper and retired gloomily to a corner to wait. 
When Mitchell arrived at nine he looked at me but said 
nothing. As I was about to go out to get something to eat 
Hartung came in and said: "Mr. Mitchell wants to speak 
to you." 

My heart sank. I went in and stood before him. 

"You called for me?" 

"Yes. Mr. McCullagh wants to see you." 

"It's all over," I thought. "I can tell by his manner. 
What a fool I was to build such high hopes on that story!" 

I went out to the hall and walked nervously to the office 
of the chief, which was at the front end of the hall. I was 
so depressed I could have cried. To think that all my fine 
dreams were to have such an end ! 

That Napoleon-like creature was sitting in his little office, 
his chin on his chest, a sea of papers about him. He did not 
turn when I entered, and my heart grew heavier. He was 
angry with me! I could see it! He kept his back to me, 
which was to show me that I was not wanted, done for ! At 
last he wheeled. 

"You called for me, Mr. McCullagh?" I murmured. 

"Mmm, yuss, yuss!" he mumbled in his thick, gummy, 
pursy way. His voice always sounded as though it were being 
obstructed by something leathery or woolly. "I wanted to 
say," he added, covering me with a single glance, "that I 
liked that story you wrote, very much indeed. A fine piece 



168 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

of work, a fine piece of work! I like to recognize a good 
piece of work when I see it. I have raised your salary five 
dollars, and I would like to give you this." He reached in 
his pocket, drew out a roll and handed over a yellow twenty- 
dollar bill. 

I could have dropped where I stood. The reaction was tre- 
mendous after my great depression. I felt as though I should 
burst with joy, but instead I stood there, awed by this gener- 
osity. 

' ' I 'm very much obliged to you, Mr. McCullagh, "I finally 
managed to say. ' ' I thank you very much. I '11 do the best 
I can." 

"It was a good piece of work," he repeated mumblingly, 
"a good piece of work," and then slowly wheeled back to 
his desk. 

I turned and walked briskly out. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

The fact that I had gained the notice of a man as important 
as McCullagh, a man about whom a contemporaneous poet 
had written a poem, was almost more than I could stand. "I 
walked on air. Yet the next morning, returning to work, I 
found myself listed for only "Hotels" and "Heard in the 
Corridors," my usual tasks, and was depressed. "Why not 
great tasks always ? Why not noble hours always? Yet once 
I had recovered from this I walked about the downtown 
streets convulsively digging my fingers into my palms and 
shaking myself with delight as I thought of Saturday, Sun- 
day and Monday. That was something worth talking about. 
Now I was a real newspaper man. I had beaten the whole 
town, and in a new city, a city strange to me ! 

Having practically nothing to do and my excitement cool- 
ing some, I returned to the art department this same day to 
report on what had happened. By now I was so set up that 
I could scarcely conceal my delight and told both volubly, not 
only about my raise in salary but also that I had been given 
a twenty-dollar bill by McCullagh himself — an amazing 
thing, of course. This last was received with mingled feelings 
by the department : McCord was pleased, of course, but Dick 
naturally was inclined to be glum. He was conscious of the 
fact that his drawings were not good, and McCord had been 
twitting him about them. Dick admitted it frankly, saying 
that he had not been able to collect himself. "You know I 
can't do those things very well and I shouldn't have been 
sent out on it. That's Mitchell for you!" Perhaps it an- 
gered him to think that he should have been so unfortunate 
at the very time that I should have been so signally re- 
warded; anyhow he did not show anything save a generous 
side to me at the time although latterly I felt that it was 
the beginning of a renewal of that slight hostility based on his 

169 



170 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

original opposition to me. He complimented me, saying: 
"You've done it this time. I'm glad you've made a hit, old 
man." 

That night, however, I was not invited to his room, as I had 
hoped I should be, although he and Peter went off some- 
where — to his room, as I assumed. I applied myself instead 
to "Heard in the Corridors." Then the days settled down 
into their old routine for me — petty assignments, minor con- 
trasts between one thing and another. Only one thing held 
me up, and that was that Hazard now urged me to do a novel 
with him, a thing which flattered me so much that I felt my 
career as a great writer was at hand. For had he not done 
a novel already? I considered it seriously for a few days, 
arguing the details of the plot with him at the office and af- 
ter hours, but it came to nothing. Plays rather than novels, 
as I fancied for some reason, were more in my line, and poems 
— things which I thought easier to do. Since writing that 
first poem a month or so before I was busy now from time to 
time scribbling down the most mediocre jingles relative to my 
depressions and dreams, and imaging them to be great verse. 
Truly, I thought I was to be a great poet, one of the very 
greatest, and so nothing else really mattered for the time 
being. Weren't poets always lone and lorn, as I was? 

It was about this time too that, having received the gift of 
twenty and the raise of five, I began to array myself in man- 
ner so ultra-smart, as I thought, but fantastic, really, that I 
grieve to think that I should ever have been such a fool. Yet * 
to tell the truth, I do not know whether I do or not. A foolish 
boyhood is as delightful as any. I had now moved into Tenth 
Street, and fortunately or unfortunately for me (fortunately, 
I now think) a change in the personnel of the Globe's edi- 
torial staff occurred which had a direct bearing upon my am- 
bitions. A man by the name of Carmichael who did the 
dramatics on the paper had been called to a better position 
in Chicago, and the position he had occupied here was there- 
fore temporarily vacant. Hazard was the logical man for the 
place and should have had it because he had held this posi- 
tion before. He was older and a much better critic. But I, as 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 171 

may be imagined, was in a very appropriate mood for this, 
having recently been thinking of writing a play, and be- 
sides, I was cra2y for advancement of any kind. Accord- 
ingly the moment I heard of it I was on the alert, eager to 
make a plea for myself and yet not dreaming that I should 
ever get it. My sole qualification, as I see it now, was that 
I was an ardent admirer of the stage and one who, because 
of his dramatic instincts (as I conceived mine to be), ought 
to make a good enough critic. I did not know that I was 
neither old nor cold nor experienced enough to do justice to 
the art of any one. Yet I should add in all fairness that for 
the work here required — to write a little two-stick announce- 
ment of each new play, mostly favorable, and to prepare a 
weekly announcement of all the new v performances — I was per- 
haps not so poorly equipped. At any rate, my recent triumph 
had given me such an excellent opinion of myself, had made 
me think that I stood so well in the eyes of Mr. McCullagh, 
that I decided to try for it. It might not mean any more 
salary, but think of the honor of it ! Dramatic Editor of the 
Globe-Democrat of St. Louis! Ha! ... I decided to try. 

There were two drawbacks to this position, as I learned 
later: one was that although I might be dramatic editor I 
should still be under the domination of Mr. Tobias Mitchell, 
who ruled this department ; the other was that I should have 
to do general reporting along with this other work, a thing 
which irritated me very much and took much of the savor 
of the task away. The department was not deemed important 
enough to give any one man complete control of it. It seemed 
a poor sort of thing to try for, once I learned of this, but 
still there would be the fact that I could still say I was a 
dramatic editor. It would give me free entrance to the thea- 
ters also. 

Consequently I began to wonder how I should go about 
getting it. Mitchell was so obviously opposed to me that I 
knew it would be useless to appeal to him. McCullagh might 
give it to me, but how appeal to him? I thought of asking 
him direct, but that would be going over Mitchell 's head, and 
he would never forgive me for that, I was sure. I debated 



172 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

for a day or two, and then decided, since my principal rela- 
tions had been with Mr. McCullagh, that I would go to him 
direct. "Why not? He had been very kind to me, had sent 
for me. Let Mitchell be angry if he would. If I made good 
he could not hurt me. 

I began to lay my plans or rather to screw up my courage 
to the point where I could force myself to go and see Mr. Mc- 
Cullagh. He was such a chill and distant figure. At the 
same time I felt that this man who was the object of so much 
reverence was one of the loneliest persons imaginable. He 
was not married. Day after day he came to this office alone, 
sat alone, ate alone, went home alone, for he had no friends 
apparently to whom he would condescend to unbend. This 
touched me. He was too big, too lonely. 

This realization drew me sympathetically toward him and 
made me imagine, if you please, that he ought to like me. Was 
I not his protege? Had he not brought me here? Instinc- 
tively I felt that I was one who could appreciate him, one 
whom he might secretly like. The only trouble was that he 
was old and famous, whereas I was a mere boy, but he would 
understand that too. 

The day after I had made up my mind I began to loiter 
about the long corridor which led to his office, in the hope of 
encountering him accidentally. I had often noticed him 
shouldering his way along the marble wainscoting of this hall, 
his little Napoleonic frame cloaked in a conventional overcoat, 
his broad, strong, intellectual face crowned by a wide-brimmed 
derby hat which he wore low over his eyes. Invariably he 
was smoking a short fat cigar, and always looked very solemn, 
even forbidding. However, having made up my mind, I lay 
in wait for him one morning, determined to see him, and 
walking restlessly to the empty telegraph room which lay at 
the other end of the hall from his office and then back, but 
keeping as close as I could to one door or another in order to 
be able to disappear quietly in case my courage failed me. 
Yet so determined was I to see him that I had come down 
early, before any of the others, in order that he should not 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 173 

slip in ahead of me and so rob me of this seemingly accidental 
encounter. 

At about eleven he arrived. I was on one of my return 
trips from the telegraph room when I heard the elevator click 
and dodged into the city room only to reappear in time to 
meet him, ostensibly on my way to the toilet. He gave me 
but one sage glance, then stared straight ahead. 

At sight of him I lost my courage. Arriving exactly oppo- 
site him, however, I halted, controlled by a reckless, eager 
impulse. 

"Mr. McCullagh," I said without further ado, "I want to 
know if you won't make me dramatic editor. I hear that 
Mr. Carmichael has resigned and the position is open. I 
thought maybe you might give it to me." I flushed and 
hesitated. 

"I will," he replied simply and gruffly. "You're dra- 
matic editor. Tell Mr. Mitchell to let you be it." 

I started to thank him but the stocky little figure moved in 
differently away. I had only time to say, "I'm very much 
obliged" before he was gone. 

I returned to the city editorial room tingling to the finger- 
tips. To think that I should have been made dramatic editor, 
and so quickly, in such an offhand, easy way! This great 
man's consideration for me was certainly portentous, I 
thought. Plainly he liked me, else why should he do this? 
If only I could now bring myself seriously to this great la- 
bor what might I not aspire to? Dramatic Editor of the 
Globe-Democrat of the great city of St. Louis, and at the age 
of twenty-one — well, now, that was something, by George! 
And this great man liked me. He really did. He knew me at 
sight, honored my request, and would no doubt, if I behaved 
myself, make a great newspaper man of me. It was some- 
thing to be the favorite of a great editor-in-chief by jing — a 
very great thing indeed. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

Upon my explaining to Mitchell what had happened he 
looked at me coldly, as much as to say "What the devil is 
this now that this ass is telling me?" Then, thinking, I sup- 
pose, that I must have some secret hold on Mr. McCullagh or 
at least stand high in his favor, he gave me a very wry smile 
and said he would have made out for me a letter of introduc- 
tion to the local managers. An hour later this was laid on 
my desk by Hartung, who congratulated me, and there I was : 
dramatic editor. "Gee!" exclaimed Hartung when he came 
in with the letter. "I bet you could have knocked Tobe over 
with a straw ! He doesn 't understand yet, I guess, how well 
you stand with the old man. The chief must like you, eh?" 
I could see that my new honor made a considerable difference 
in his already excellent estimate of me. 

Armed with this letter I now visited the managers of the 
theaters, all of whom received me cordially. I can still see 
myself very gay and enthusiastic, sure that I was entering 
upon a great work of some kind. And the dreams I had in 
connection with the theater, my future as a great popular 
playwright perhaps ! It was all such a wonder-world to me, 
the stage, such a fairyland, that I bubbled with joy as I 
went about thinking that now certainly I should come in 
touch with actors, beautiful women! Think of it — dramatic 
critic ! — a person of weight and authority ! 

There were seven or eight theaters in St. Louis, three or 
four of them staging only that better sort of play known as a 
first-class attraction; the others giving melodrama, vaudeville 
and burlesque. The manager of the Grand, a short, thick- 
set, sandy-complexioned man of most jovial mien, was Mc- 
Manus, father of the well-known cartoonist of a later period 
and the prototype of his most humorous character, Mr. Jiggs. 
He exclaimed upon seeing me : 

174 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 175 

"So you're the new dramatic editor, are you? Well, they 
change around over there pretty swift, don't they? What's 
happened to Carmichael? First it was Hartridge, then Al- 
bertson, then Hazard, then Mathewson, then Carmichael, and 
now you, all in my time. Well, Mr. Dreiser, I 'm glad to see 
you. You're always welcome here. I '11 take you out and in- 
troduce you to our doormen and Mr. in the box- 
office. He'll always recognize you. We'll give you the best 
seat in the house if it's empty when you come." 

He smiled humorously and I had to laugh at the way he 
rattled off this welcome. An aura of badinage and humor 
encircled him, quite the same as that which makes Mr. Jiggs 
delightful. This was the first I had ever heard of Hazard 
having held this position, and now I felt a little guilty, as 
though I had edged him out of something that rightfully be- 
longed to him. Still, I didn't really care, sentimentalize as 
I might. I had won. 

"Did Bob Hazard once have this position?" I asked fa- 
miliarly. 

"Yes. That was when he was on the paper the last time. 
He's been off and on the Globe three or four times, you know." 
He smiled clownishly. I laughed. 

"You and I'll get along, I guess," he smiled. 

At the other theaters I was received less informally but 
with uniform courtesy; all assured me that I should be wel- 
come at any time and that if I ever wished tickets for my- 
self or a friend or anybody on the paper I could get them 
if they had them. "And we'll make it a point to have them," 
said one. I felt that this was quite an acquisition of influ- 
ence. It gave me considerable opportunity to be nice to any 
friends I might acquire, and then think of the privilege of 
seeing any show I chose, to walk right into a theater without 
being stopped, and to be pleasantly greeted en route ! 

The character of the stage of that day, in St. Louis and the 
rest of America at least, as contrasted with what I know of 
its history in the world in general, remains a curious and 
interesting thing to me. As I look back on it now it seems 



176 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

inane, but then it was wonderful. It is entirely possible 
that nations, like plants or individuals, have to grow and 
obtain their full development regardless of the accumulated 
store of wisdom and achievement in other lands, else how 
otherwise explain the vast level of mediocrity which obtains 
in some countries and many forms of effort, and that after so 
much that has been important elsewhere? 

The stage in other lands had already seen a few tremen- 
dous periods; even here in America the mimetic art was no 
mystery. A few great things had been done, in acting at least, 
by Booth, Barrett, Macready, Forrest, Jefferson, Modjeska, 
Fanny Davenport, Mary Anderson, to name but a few. I was 
too young at the time to know or judge of their art or the 
quality of the plays they interpreted, aside from those of 
Shakespeare perhaps, but certainly their fame for a high form 
of production was considerable. 

And yet, during the few months that I was dramatic edi- 
tor, and the following year when I was a member of another 
staff and had entree to these same theaters, I saw only one or 
two actors worthy the name, only one or two performances 
which I can now deem worth while. Richard Mansfield and 
Felix Morris stand out in my mind as excellent, and Sol 
Smith Russell and Joseph Jefferson as amusing comedians, 
but who else? Comic and light opera, with a heavy inter- 
mixture of straight melodrama, and comedy-dramas, were 
about the only things that managers ventured to essay. 
Occasionally a serious actor of the caliber of Sir Henry Irv- 
ing or E. S. Willard would appear on the scene, but many 
of their plays were of a more or less melodramatic character, 
highly sentimental, emotional and unreal. In my stay here 
of about a year and a half I saw Joseph Jefferson, Sol Smith 
Russell, Salvini junior, Wilson Barrett, Fanny Davenport, 
Richard Mansfield, E. S. Willard, Felix Morris, E. H. Soth- 
ern, Julia Marlowe and a score of others more or less impor- 
tant but too numerous to mention; comedians, light-opera 
singers and the like; and although at the time I was enter- 
tained and moved by some of them, I now realize that in the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 177 

main they were certainly pale spindling lights. And at that, 
America was but then entering upon its worst period of stage 
sentiment or mush. The movies as such had not yet ap- 
peared, but ' ' Mr. Frohman presents ' ' was upon us, master of 
middle-class sweetness and sentimentality. I remember star- 
ing at the three-sheet lithos and thinking how beautiful and 
perfect they were and what a great thing it was to be of the 
stage. To be an author, an actor, a composer, a manager ! 

To have "Mr. Frohman present "! 

The Empire and Lyceum theater companies, with their 
groups of perfect lady and gentleman actors, were then at 
their height, the zenith of stage art — Mr. John Drew, for in- 
stance, with his wooden face and manners, Mr. Faversham, 
Miss Opp, Miss Spong, Miss This, Miss That. Such excellent 
actors as Henry E. Dixey, Richard Mansfield or Felix Morris 
could scarcely gain a hearing. I recall sitting one night in 
Hogan's Theater, at Ninth or Tenth and Pine streets, and 
hearing Richard Mansfield order down the curtain at one of 
the most critical points in his famous play "Baron Chev- 
reuil, " or some such name, and then come before it and de 
nounce the audience in anything but measured terms for 
what he considered its ignorance and lack of taste. It had 
applauded, it seems, at the wrong time in that asinine way 
which only an American audience can when it is there solely 
because it thinks it ought to be. By that time Mansfield had 
already achieved a pseudo if not a real artistic following and 
was slowly but surely becoming a cult. On this occasion he 
explained to that bland gathering that they were fools, that 
American audiences were usually composed of such animals 
or creatures and were in the main dull to the point of ennui, 
that they were not there to see a great actor act but to see a 
man called Richard Mansfield, who was said to be a great 
actor. He pointed out how uniformly American audiences 
applauded at the wrong time, how truly immune they were 
to all artistic values, how wooden and reputation-following. 
At this some of them arose and left; others seemed to con- 
sider it a great joke and remained ; still others were angry but 



178 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

wanted to see the "show." Having finished his speech he 
ordered up the curtain and proceeded with his act as though 
nothing had happened, as though the audience were really 
not there. I confess I rather liked him for his stand even 
though I did not quite know whether he was right or wrong. 
But I wrote it up as though he had grossly insulted his au- 
dience, a body of worthy and respectable St. Louisans. Some 
one — Hazard, I think — suggested that it would be good policy 
to do so, and I, being green to my task, did so. 

The saccharine strength of the sentiment and mush which 
we could gulp down at that time, and still can and do to this 
day, is to me beyond belief. And I was one of those who did 
the gulping; indeed I was one of the worst. Those perfect 
nights, for instance, when as dramatic critic I strolled into 
one theater or another, two or three in an evening possibly, 
and observed (critically, as I thought) the work of those who 
were leaders in dramatic or humorous composition and that of 
our leading actors ! It may be that the creative spirit has no 
particular use for intelligence above a mediocre level, or, bet- 
ter yet and far more likely, creative intelligence works through 
supermen whose visions, by which the mob is eventually enter- 
tained and made wise, must content them. Otherwise how 
explain the vast level of mediocrity, especially in connection 
with the stage, the people's playhouse, then, today and for- 
ever, I suppose, until time shall be no more? 

I recall, for instance, that I thought Mr. Drew was really 
a superior actor, and also that I thought that most of the 
plays of Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur "Wing Pinero, Au- 
gustus Thomas, and others (many others), were enduring 
works of art. I confess it: I thought so, or at least I 
heard so and let it go at that. How sound I thought their 
interpretations of life to be! The cruel over-lords of trade 
in those plays, for instance, how cruel they were and how 
true ! The virtues of the lowly workingman and the be- 
trayed daughter with her sad, downcast expression ! The 
moral splendor of the young minister who denounced heart- 
less wealth and immorality and cruelty in high places and 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 179 

reformed them then and there or made them confess their 
errors ! I can see him yet : slim, simple, perfect, a truly good 
man. The offhand on-the-spot manner in which splendid 
reforms were effected in an hour or a night, the wrongs 
righted instanter — in plays ! You can still see them in any 
movie house in America. To this hour there is no such thing 
as a reckless unmarried girl in any movie exhibited in Amer- 
ica. They are all married. 

But how those St. Louis audiences applauded ! Bight, here 
in America at least, was always appropriately rewarded and 
left triumphant, wrong was quite always properly drummed 
out. Our better selves invariably got the better of our lower 
selves, and we went home cured, reformed, saved. And there 
was little of evil of any description which went before, in acts 
one and two, which could not be straightened out in the last 
act. 

The spirit of these plays captivated my fancy at that time 
and elevated me into a world of unreality which unfortu- 
nately fell in with the wildest of my youthful imaginings. 
Love, as I saw it here set forth in all those gorgeous or senti- 
mental trappings, was the only kind of love worth while. 
Fortune also, gilded as only the melodramatic stage can gild 
it and as shown nightly by Mr. Frohman everywhere in Amer- 
ica, was the only type of fortune worth while. To be rich, 
elegant, exclusive, as in the world of Frohman and Mr. Jones 
and Mr. Pinero ! According to what I saw here, love and 
youth were the only things worth discussing or thinking 
about. The splendor of the Orient, the social flare of New 
York, London and Paris, the excited sex-imaginings of such 
minds as Dumas junior, Oscar Wilde, then in his heyday, 
Jones, Pinero and a number of other current celebrities, 
seemed all to be built around youth and undying love. The 
dreary humdrum of actual life was carefully shut out from 
these pieces ; the simple delights of ordinary living, if they 
were used at all, were exaggerated beyond sensible belief. 
And elsewhere — not here in St. Louis, but in the East, New 
York, London, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg— were all the 
things that were worth while. If I really wanted to be happy 



180 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

I must eventually go to those places, of course. There were 
the really fine clothes and the superior personalities (physi- 
cally and socially), and vice and poverty (painted in such 
peculiar colors that they were always divinely sad or repel- 
lent) existed only in those great cities. 



CHAPTER XXX 

I began to dream more than ever of establishing some such 
perfect atmosphere for myself somehow, somewhere — but 
never in St. Louis, of course. That was too common, too 
Western, too far removed from the real wonders of the world. 
Love and mansions and travel and saccharine romance were 
the great things, but they were afar off, in New York. (It 
was around this time that I was establishing the atmosphere 
of a "studio" in Tenth street.) Nothing could be so won- 
derful as love in a mansion, a palace in some oriental realm 
such as was indicated in the comic operas in which DeWolf 
Hopper, Thomas Q. Seabrooke, Francis "Wilson, Eddie Foy 
and Frank Daniels were then appearing. How often, with 
McCord or "Wood as companion, occasionally Hazard or a 
new friend introduced to me by "Wood and known as Roden- 
berger, or Rody (a most amazing person, as I will later re- 
late), I responded to these poetic stage scenes! "With one or 
other of these I visited as many theaters as I could, if for no 
more than an hour or an act at a time, and consumed with 
wonder and delight such scenes as most appealed to me : the 
denunciation scene, for instance, in The Middleman, or the 
third act of nearly any of Henry Arthur Jones's plays. Also 
quite all of the light operas of Reginald de Koven and Harry 
B. Smith, as well as those compendiums of nondescript color 
and melody, the extravaganzas The Crystal Slipper, Ali Baba, 
Sindbad the Sailor. Young actresses such as Delia Fox, Mabel 
Amber, Edna May, forerunners of a long line of comic opera 
soubrettes, who somehow reminded me of Alice, held me spell- 
bound with delight and admiration. Here at last was the 
kind of maiden I was really craving, an actress of this hoyden, 
airy temperament. 

I remember that one night, at the close of one of Mr. "Wil- 
lard's performances at the Olympic — The Professor's Love 

181 



182 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Story, in which he was appearing with a popular leading 
woman, a very beautiful one — I was asked by the manager 
to wait for a few moments after the performance so that he 
might introduce me. Why, I don't know. It seemed that 
he was taking them to supper and thought they might like to 
meet one of the local dramatic critics or that I might like to 
accompany them ; an honor which I declined, out of fright or 
bashfulness. When they finally appeared in the foyer of the 
theater, however, the young actress very stagy and soft and 
clinging and dressed most carefully after the manner of the 
stage, I was beside myself with envy and despair. For she 
appeared hanging most tenderly on her star's arm (she was 
his mistress, I understood) and gazing soulfully about. Such 
beauty ! Such grace ! Such vivacity ! Could anything be so 
lovely? Think of having such a perfect creature love you, 
hang on your arm! And here was I, poor dub, a mere 
reporter, a nobody, upon whom such a splendid creature 
would not bend a second glance. Mr. Willard was full of 
the heavy hauteur of the actor, which made the scene all 
the more impressive to me. I think most of us like to be up- 
staged at one time or another by some one. I glanced at 
her bashfully sidewise, pretending to be but little interested, 
while I was really dying of envy. Finally, after a few words 
and a few sweety-sweet smiles cast in my direction, I was 
urged to come with them but instead hurried away, pleading 
necessity and cursing my stars and my fate. Think of being 
a mere reporter at twenty -five or thirty a week, while others, 
earning thousands, were thus basking in the sunshine of suc- 
cess and love ! Ah, why might not I have been born rich or 
famous and so able to command so lovely a woman 1 

If I had been of an ordinary, sensible, everyday turn of 
mind, with a modicum of that practical wisdom which puts 
moderate place and position first and sets great store by 
the saving of money, I might have succeeded fairly well here,, 
much better than I did anywhere else for a long period after. 
Unquestionably Mr. McCullagh liked me; I think he may 
have been fond of me in some amused saturnine way, inter- 
ested to keep such a bounding, high-flown dunce about the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 183 

place. I might have held this place for a year or two and 
made it a stepping-stone to something better. But instead of 
rejoicing in the work and making it the end and aim of my 
daily labors, I looked upon it as a mere bauble, something I 
had today but might not have tomorrow. And anyhow, 
there were better things than working day by day and living 
in a small room. Life ought certainly to bring me something 
better, something truly splendid — and soon. I deserved it — ■ 
everything, a great home, fine clothes, pretty women, the 
respect and companionship of famous men. Indeed all my 
pain and misery was plainly caused by just such a lack or 
lacks as this. Had I these things all would be well; without 
them — well, I was very miserable. I was ready to accept 
socialism if by that I could get what I wanted, while not 
ready to admit that all people were as deserving as I by any 
means. The sad state of the poor workingman was a constant 
thought with me, but nearly always I was the greatest and 
poorest and most deserving of all workingmen. 

This view naturally tended to modify the sanity of my 
work. Granting a modicum of imagination and force, still any 
youth limited as I was at that time has a long road to go. 
Even in that most imaginative of all professions, the literary, 
the possessor of such notions as I then held is certainly de- 
barred from accomplishing anything important until he passes 
beyond them. Yet the particular thought or attitude I have 
described appears to reign in youth. Too often it is a con- 
dition of many minds of the better sort and is retained in its 
worst form until by rough experience it is knocked out of 
them or they are destroyed utterly in the process. But it 
cannot be got over with quickly. Mine was a sad case. 
One of the things which this point of view did for me was to 
give my writing, at that time, a mushy and melancholy turn 
which would not go in any newspaper of today, I hope. It 
caused me to paint the ideal as not only entirely probable 
but necessary before life would be what it should ! — the prog- 
ress bug, as you see. I could so twist and discolor the most 
commonplace scenes as to make one think that I was writing 
of paradise. Indeed I allowed my imagination to run away 



184 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

with me at times and only the good sense of the copy-reader 
or the indifference of a practical-minded public saved the 
paper from appearing utterly ridiculous. 

On one occasion, for instance, I went to report a play of 
mediocre quality that was running at the Olympic, and was 
so impressed with a love scene which was a part of it that 
I was entirely blinded to all the faults of construction which 
the remainder of the play showed, and wrote it up in the 
most glowing colors. And the copy-reader, Hartung, was too 
weary that night or too inattentive to capture it. The next 
day some of the other newspaper men in the office noticed it 
and commented on it to me or to Hartung, saying it was 
ridiculously high-flown and that the play itself was silly, 
which was true. But did that cure me? Not a bit. I was 
reduced for a day or two by it, but not for long. Seeing other 
plays of the same caliber and with much sweet love mush in 
them, I raved as before. 

A little later a negro singer, a young woman of considerable 
vocal ability who was being starred as the Black Patti, was 
billed to appear in St. Louis. The manager of the bureau that 
was presenting her called my attention by letter to her ' ' mar- 
velous" ability, and by means of clippings and notices of her 
work published elsewhere had endeavored to impress me 
favorably. I read these notices, couched in the glowing 
phrases of the press-agent, and then went forth on this evening 
to cover this myself. To make it all the grander, I invited 
McCord and with him proceeded to the theater, where we 
were assigned. a box. 

As it turned out, or as I chanced to see or feel it, the young 
woman was a sweet and impressive singer, engaging and 
magnetic. McCord agreed with me that she could sing. We 
listened to the program of a dozen pieces, including such old 
favorites as Suwanee River and Comin' Thro' the Bye, and 
then I, being greatly moved, returned to the office and wrote 
an account that was fairly sizzling with the beauty which I 
thought was there. I did not attempt critically to analyze her 
art — I could not, knowing nothing of even the rudiments of 
music — but plunged at once into that wider realm which 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 185 

involved the subtleties of nature itself. "What is so beautiful 
as the sound which the human voice is capable of producing, ' ' 
I wrote in part, "especially when that voice is itself a com- 
pound of the subtlest things in nature? Here we have a 
young girl, black it is true, fresh from the woods and fields 
of her native country, yet, blessed by some strange chance 
with that mystic thing, a voice, and fittingly interpreting via 
song all that we hold to be most lovely. The purling of the 
waters, the radiance of the moonlight, the odor of sweet flow- 
ers, sunlight, storm, the voices and echoes of nature, all are 
found here, thrilling over lips which represent in their youth- 
fulness but a few of the years which wisdom and skill would 
seem to require. Yes, one may sit and, in hearing Miss Jones 
sing, vicariously entertain all these things, because of them 
she is a compound, youthful, vivacious, suggestive of the ele- 
mental sweetness of nature itself." 

To understand the significance of such a statement in St. 
Louis one would have to look into the social and political con- 
ditions of the people who dwelt there. To a certain extent 
they were Southern in temperament, representing the vigorous 
anti-negro spirit which prevailed for so many years after the 
war. Again, they were fairly illuminated where music was 
concerned. Assuming that a bit of idealism such as this was 
sound, it might get by; but when it is remembered that this 
was largely mush and written about a negro, a race more 
or less alien to their sympathy, would it not naturally fall 
upon hard ears and appear somewhat ridiculous? A negro 
the compound of the subtlest elements in nature! And this 
in their favorite paper! 

By chance it went through, Hartung having come to look 
upon most of my stuff as the outpourings of some strange 
genius who could do about as he pleased. Neither Mitchell 
nor the editor-in-chief saw it perhaps, or if they did they gave 
it no attention, music, the theater and the arts being of small 
import here. But, depend upon it, the editors of the various 
rival papers that were constantly being sniffed at by the Globe 
saw it and knowing the sensitiveness of our editor-in-chief 
to criticism of his own paper at once set to work to make some- 



186 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

thing out of it. And of all the editors in the middle West, 
McCullagh, by reason of his force and taste and care in 
editing his paper, was a shining target for a thing like this. 
He was, as a rule, impeccable and extremely conspicuous. 
Whatever he did or said, good, bad or indifferent, was invari- 
ably the subject of local newspaper comment, and when any 
little discrepancy or error appeared in the Globe-Democrat 
it was always charged to him personally. And so it was with 
this furore over the Black Patti. It was too good a thing to be 
lost sight of. 

"The erudite editor of the Globe-Democrat," observed the 
Post-Dispatch editorially, "appears to have visited one of 
our principal concert halls last night. It is not often that 
that ponderous intellect can be called down from the heights 
of international politics to contemplate so simple a thing as a 
singer of songs, a black one at that ; but when true art beckons 
even he can be counted upon to answer. Apparently the 
Black Patti beckoned to him last evening, and he was not 
deaf to her call, as the following magnificent bit of word- 
painting fresh from his pen is here to show." (Then fol- 
lowed the praise in full.) "None but the grandiloquent edi- 
tor of the Globe-Democrat could have looked into the subtleties 
of nature, as represented by the person of Miss Sisseretta 
Jones, and there discovered the wonders of music and poetry 
such as he openly confesses to have done. Indeed we have here 
at last a measure of that great man 's insight and feeling, a love 
of art, music, poetry and the like such as has not previously 
been indicated by him. And we hereby hasten to make repre- 
sentation of our admiration and great debt that others too 
may not be deprived of this great privilege." After this 
came more of the same gay raillery, with here and there a 
reference to ' ' the great patron of the black arts ' ' and the pure 
joy that must have been his at thus vicariously being able to 
enjoy within the precincts of Exposition Hall "the purling of 
the waters" bubbling from a black throat. It was a gentle 
satire, not wholly uncalled for since the item had appeared 
in the Globe, and directed at the one man who could least 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 187 

stand that sort of thing, sensitive as he was to his personal 
dignity. 

I was blissfully unaware that any comment had been 
made on my effusion until about five in the afternoon, by 
which time the afternoon editions of the Post-Dispatch had 
been out several hours. "When I entered the office at five, 
comfortable and at peace with myself in my new position, 
excited comment was running about the office as to what "the 
old man" would think and say and do now. He had gone at 
two, it appeared, to the Southern for luncheon and had not 
returned. Wait until he saw it ! Oh me ! Oh my ! Wouldn 't 
he be hopping ! Hartung, who was reasonably nervous as to 
his own share in the matter, was the first to approach and 
impress me with the dreadfulness of it all, how savage "the 
old man" could be in any such instance. "Gee, just wait! 
Oh, but he'll be hot, I bet!" As he talked the "old man" 
passed up the hall, a grim and surly figure. I saw my dra- 
matic honors going a-glimmering. 

"Here," I said to Hartung, pretending a kind of inno- 
cence, even at this late hour, ' ' what 's all this about ? What 's 
the row, anyhow ?■ ' ' 

"Didn't you see the editorial in the Post-DispatcM" in- 
quired Hartung gloomily. It was his own predicament that 
was troubling him. 

"No. What about?" 

"Why, that criticism you wrote about the Black Patti. 
They've made all sorts of fun of it. The worst of it is that 
they 've charged it all up to the old man. ' ' 

I smiled a sickly smile. I felt as if I had committed some 
great crime. Why had I attempted to write anything "fine" 
anyhow ? Why couldn 't I have been content and rested with 
a little praise ? Had I no sense at all ? Must I always be try- 
ing to do something great ? Perhaps this would be the end of 
me. 

Hartung brought me the Post-Dispatch, and sorrowfully 
and with falling vitals I read it, my toes curling, my stomach 
seeming gradually to retire to my backbone. Why had I 
done it ! 



188 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

As I was standing there, my eyes glued to the paper, near 
the door which looked into the main city room in which was 
Tobe scribbling dourly away, I heard and then saw McCullagh 
enter and walk up to the stout city editor. He had a copy of 
the selfsame Post-Dispatch crumpled roughly in his hand, 
and on his face was gathered what seemed to me a dark scowl. 

' ' Did you see this, Mr. Mitchell ? " I heard him say. 

Tobe looked up, then closely and respectfully at the paper. 

"Yes," he said. 

"I don't think a thing like that ought to appear in our 
paper. It 's a little bit too high-flown for our audience. Your 
reader should have modified it." 

"I think so myself," replied Tobe quietly. 

The editor walked out. Tobe waited for his footsteps to 
die away and then growled at Hartung: "Why the devil did 
you let that stuff go through ? Haven 't I warned you against 
that sort of thing? Why can't you watch out?" 

I could have fallen through the floor. I had a vision of 
Hartung burying his head in his desk, scared and mute. 

After the evening assignments had been given out and Tobe 
had gone to dinner, Hartung crept up to me. 

"Gee, the old man was as mad as the devil!" he began. 
"Tobe gave me hell. He won't say anything to you maybe, 
but he'll take it out on me. He's a little afraid of your pull 
with the old man, but he gives me the devil. Can't you look 
out for those things?" 



CHAPTER XXXI 

In spite of this little mishap, which did me no great harm, 
there was a marked improvement in my affairs in every way. 
I had a better room, various friends — Wood, McCord, Roden- 
berger, Hazard, Bellairs, a new reporter by the name of 
Johnson, another by the name of Walden Root, a nephew of 
the senator — and the growing consideration if not admiration 
of many of the newspaper men of the city. Among them I 
was beginning to be looked upon as a man of some importance, 
and the proof of it was that from time to time I found myself 
being discussed in no mild way. From now on I noticed that 
my noble "Wood, whom I had so much looked up to at first, 
began to take me about with him to one or more Chinese 
restaurants of the most beggarly description in the environs of 
the downtown section, which same he had discovered and with 
the proprietors of which he was on the best of terms. They 
were really hang-outs for crooks and thieves and disreputable 
tenderloin characters generally (such was the beginning of 
the Chinese restaurant in America) , but not so to Wood. He 
had the happy faculty of persuading himself that there was 
something vastly mysterious and superior about the entire 
Chinese race, and after introducing me to many of his new 
laundry friends he proceeded to assure me of the existence 
of some huge Chinese organization known as the Six Com- 
panies which, so far as I could make out from hearing him 
talk, was slowly but surely (and secretly, of course) getting 
control of the entire habitable globe. It had complete control 
of great financial and constructive ventures here, there and 
everywhere, and supplied on order thousands of Chinese 
laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere. And this 
organization ruled them with a rod of iron, cutting their 
throats and burying them head down in a bucket of rice when 
they failed to perform their bounden duties and transferring 

189 



190 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

their remains quietly to China, in coffins made in China and 
brought here for that purpose. The Chinese who had worked 
for the builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this 
company, so he said. 

Again, there were the Chinese Free Masons, a society so old 
and so powerful and so mysterious that one might speak of it 
only in whispers for fear of getting into trouble. This indeed 
was the great organization of the world, in China and every- 
where else. Kings and potentates knew of it and trembled 
before its power. If it wished it could sweep the Chinese 
Emperor and all European monarchs off their thrones to- 
morrow. There were rites, mysteries, sanctuaries within sanc- 
tuaries in this great organization. He himself was as yet a 
mere outsider, snooping about, but by degrees, slowly and 
surely, as I was given to understand, was worming its secrets 
out of these Chinese restaurant-keepers and laundrymen, its 
deepest mysteries, whereby he hoped to profit in this way: 
he was going to study Chinese, then go to China. There he 
would get into this marvelous organization through the influ- 
ence of some of his Chinese friends here. Then he was going 
to get next to some of the officials of the Chinese Government, 
and being thus highly recommended and thought of would 
come back here eventually as an official Chinese interpreter, 
attached perhaps to the Chinese Legation at "Washington. 
How he was to profit so vastly by this I could not see, but he 
seemed to think that he would. 

Again, there was his literary world which he was always 
dreaming about and slaving over, his art ambitions, into 
which I was now by degrees permitted to look. He was forg- 
ing ahead in that realm, and since I was doing fairly well 
as a daily scribbler it might be that I would be able to per- 
ceive a little of all he was hoping to do. His great dream 
or scheme was to study the underworld life of St. Louis at 
first hand, those horrible, grisly, waterfront saloons and 
lowest tenderloin dives and brothels south of Market and east 
of Eighth where, listening to the patois of thieves and pimps 
and lechers and drug-fiends and murderers and outlaws gen- 
erally, he was to extract from them, aside from their stories, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 191 

some bizarre originality of phrase and scene that was to stand 
him in good stead in the composition of his tales. Just now, 
so he told me, he was content with making notes, jotting 
down scraps of conversation heard at bars, in sloppy urinals, 
cheap dance-halls, and I know not what. With a little more 
time and a little more of that slowly arriving sanity which 
comes to most of us eventually, I am inclined to think that 
he might have made something out of all this; he was so 
much -in earnest, so patient ; only, as I saw it, he Avas filled 
with an almost impossible idealism and romance which threw 
nearly everything out of proportion. He naturally inclined 
to the arabesque and the grotesque, but in no balanced way. 
His dreams were too wild, his mood at nearly all times too 
irtterly romantic, his deductions far beyond what a sane con- 
templation of the facts warranted. 

And relative to this period I could other tales unfold. He 
and Peter, long before I had arrived on the scene, had sur- 
rounded themselves with a company of wayfarers of their 
own: down-and-out English army officers and grafting 
younger sons of good families, a Frenchman or two, one of 
whom was a poet, several struggling artists who grafted on 
them, and a few weird and disreputable characters so de- 
graded and nondescript that I could never make out just what 
their charm was. At least two of these had suitable rooms, 
where, in addition to Dick's and mine, we were accustomed 
to meet. There were parties, Sunday and evening walks or 
trips, dinners. Poems, on occasion, were read, original, first- 
hand compositions ; Dick 's stories, as Peter invariably in- 
sisted, were "inflicted," the "growler" or "duck" (a tin 
bucket of good size) was "rushed" for beer, and cheese 
and crackers and hot crawfish, sold by old ambling negroes 
on the streets after midnight, were bought and consumed with 
gusto. Captain Simons, Captain Seller, Toussaint, Benet — 
these are names of figures that are now so dim as to be mere 
wraiths, ranged about a smoky, dimly lighted room in some 
downtown rooming-house. Both Dick and Peter had reached 
that distinguished state where they were the center of at- 
traction as well as supports and props to these others, and 



192 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

between them got up weird entertainments, knockabout Dutch 
comedian acts, which they took down to some wretched dance- 
hall and staged, each "doing a turn." The glee over the 
memory of these things as they now narrated them to me! 

Wood was so thin physically and so vigorous mentally that 
he was fascinating to look at. He had an idea that this 
bohemianism and his story work were of the utmost impor- 
tance; and so they were if they had been but a prelude to 
something more serious, or if his dreams could only have 
been reduced to paper and print. There was something that 
lay in his eye, a ray. There was an aroma to his spirit which 
was delicious. As I get him now, he was a rather underdone 
Poe or de Maupassant or Manet, and assuredly a portion 
of the makings was certainly there. For at times the moods 
he could evoke in me were poignant, and he saw beauty and 
romance in many and strange ways and places. I have seen 
him enter a dirty, horrible saloon in one of St. Louis's lowest 
dive regions with the air of a Prince Charming and there 
seat himself at some sloppy table, his patent leather low-quar- 
ters scraping the sanded or sawdusted floor, order beer and 
then, smiling genially upon all, begin to transcribe from mem- 
ory whole sections of conversations he had heard somewhere, 
in the street perhaps, all the while racking his brain to re- 
call the exact word and phrase. Unlike myself, he had a 
knack of making friends with these shabby levee and under- 
world characters, syphilitic, sodden, blue-nosed bums mostly, 
whom he picked up from Heaven knows where. And how he 
seemed to prize their vile language, their lies and their viler 
thoughts ! 

And there was McCord, bless his enthusiastic, materialistic 
heart, who seemed to take fire from this joint companionship 
and was determined to do something, he scarcely knew what 
— draw, paint, write, collect — anything. His mind was so 
wrought up by the rich pattern which life was weaving before 
his eyes that he could scarcely sleep at nights. He was for 
prowling about with us these winter and spring days, looking 
at the dark city after work hours, or investigating these 
wretched dives with Dick and myself. Or, the three of us 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 193 

would take a banjo, a mandolin and a flute (McCord could 
perform on the flute and Dick on the mandolin) and go to 
Forrest Park or one of the minor parks on the south side, 
and there proceed to make the night hideous with our carol- 
ings until some solid policeman, assuming that the public 
had rights, would interfere and bid us depart. Our invariable 
retort on all such occasions was that we were newspaper men 
and artists and as such entitled to courtesies from the police, 
which the thick-soled minion of the law would occasionally 
admit. Sometimes we would go to Dick's room or mine and 
chatter and sing until dawn, when, somewhat subdued, we 
would seek out some German saloon-keeper whom either Peter 
or Wood knew, rouse him out of his slumbers ahd demand 
that he come down and supply us with ham and eggs and 
beer. 

My stage critical work having vivified my desire to write 
a play or comic opera on the order of Wang or The Isle of 
Chwnpagne, two of the reigning successes of that day, or 
the pleasing Robin Hood of de Koven, I set about this task 
as best I might, scribbling scenes, bits of humor, phases of 
character. In this idea I was aided and abetted not only by 
Wood and McCord, both of whom by now seemed to think I 
might do something, but by the fact that the atmosphere 
of the Globe office, as well as of St. Louis itself, was, for me 
at least, inspirational and creative. I liked the world in 
which I now found myself. There were about me and in the 
city so many who seemed destined to do great things — Wood, 
McCord, Hazard, a man by the name of Bennett who was 
engaged in sociologic propaganda of one kind and another, 
William Marion Reedy, already editing the Mirror, Albert 
Johnson, a most brilliant reporter who had, preceding my 
coming, resigned from the Globe and gone over to the Chron- 
icle, Alfred Robyn, composer of Answer and Marizanillo, one 
of whose operas was even then being given a local tryout. 
I have mentioned the wonderful W. C. Brann who preceded 
me in writing "Heard in the Corridors" and who later 
stirred America with the Iconoclast. 

All this, plus the fact that Augustus Thomas had come 



194 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

from here, a reporter on the Post-Dispatch, and that I was 
now seeing one of his plays, In Missouri, moved me to the 
point where I finally thought out what I considered a fairly 
humorous plot for a comic opera, which was to be called 
Jeremiah I. It was based on the idea of transporting, by 
reason of his striking accidentally a mythical Aztec stone on 
his farm, an old Indiana farmer of a most cantankerous and 
inquisitive disposition from the era in which he then was 
back into that of the Aztecs of Mexico, where, owing to a 
religious invocation then being indulged in with a view to dis- 
covering a new ruler, he was assumed to be the answer. 
Beginning as a cowardly refugee in fear for his life, he was 
slowly changed into an amazing despot, having at one time 
as many as three hundred ex-advisers or Aztec secretaries of 
state in one pen awaiting poisoning. He was to be dissuaded 
from carrying out this plan by his desire for a certain Aztec 
maiden, who was to avoid him until he repented of his 
crimes. She eventually persuaded him to change the form 
of government from that of a despotism to that of a republic, 
with himself as candidate for President. 

There was nothing much to it. Its only humor lay in the 
thought or sight of a cranky, curious, critical farmer super- 
imposed upon ancient architecture and forms of worship. 
Having once thought it out, however, and being pleased with 
it, I worked at it feverishly nights when I was not on assign- 
ments, and in a week or less had a rough outline of it, lyrics 
and all. I told McCord and Wood about it. And so great 
was their youthful encouragement that at once I saw this as 
the way out of my difficulties, the path to that great future 
I desired. I would become the author of comic opera books. 
Already I saw myself in New York, rich, famous. 

But at that time I could not possibly write without con- 
stant encouragement, and having roughed out the opera I 
now burned for assistance in developing it in detail. At last 
I went to Peter and told him of my difficulty, my inability 
to go ahead. He seemed to relish the whole idea hugely, so 
much so that he made the thing seem far more plausible and 
easy for me to do and urged me to go ahead, not to faint or 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 195 

get cold feet. Enamored of costumes and gorgeous settings, 
he even went so far as to first suggest and then later work 
out in water color, suggestions for costumes and color schemes 
which I thought wonderful. I was lifted to the seventh 
heaven. To think that I had worked out something which he 
considered interesting ! 

Later that evening, at Peter's suggestion I outlined por- 
tions of it to Wood. He also seemed to believe that it was 
good. He insisted that there must be an evening at his 
room or mine when I would read it all to them. Accordingly 
a week later I read it in Dick's room, to much partial applause 
of course. What else could they do? Peter even went so 
far as to suggest that he would love to act the part of Jere- 
miah I, and forthwith began to give us imitations of the pros- 
pective king's mannerisms and characteristics. Whatever 
the merit of the manuscript itself, certainly we imagined 
Peter's characterizations to be funny. Later he brought me 
as many as fifty designs of costumes and scenes in color, which 
appealed to me as having novelty as well as beauty. He had 
evidently worked for weeks, nights after hours and morn- 
ings before coming to the office and on Sundays. By this I 
was so thrilled that I could scarcely believe my eyes. To 
think that I had written the book of a real comic opera that 
should be deemed worthy of this, and that it was within the 
range of possibility that it would some day be produced! 

I began to feel myself a personage, although at bottom I 
mistrusted the reality of it all. Fate could not be that kind, 
not so swift. I should never get it produced . . . and yet, 
like the man in the Arabian fable who kicked over his tray of 
glassware, dreaming great dreams, I was tending toward the 
same thing. There was always in me the saving grace of 
doubt or self -mistrust. I was never quite sure that I should be 
able to do all that at times I was inclined to hope I might, and 
so was usually inclined to go about my work as nervously 
and as enthusiastically as ever, hoping that I might have 
some of the good fortune of which I dreamed, but never seri- 
ously depending on it. 

Perhaps it would have been better for me had I. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

While I rejoiced in the thought that I might now, and so 
easily, become a successful comic opera librettist, and a poet 
besides, still I found myself for the most part in a very 
gloomy frame of mind. One of the things that grieved me 
intensely, as I have said, was the sight of bitter poverty and 
failure, and the fact that I personally was not one of those 
solid commercial figures of which St. Louis was full at this 
time. They filled the great hotels, the clubs, the mansions, 
the social positions of importance. They were free, as I 
foolishly thought, to indulge in all those luxuries and pleas- 
ures which, as I so sadly saw, the poor were not privileged 
to enjoy, myself included. Just about that time there was 
something about a commercial institution — its exterior sim- 
plicity and bareness, the thrash of its inward life, its sug- 
gestion of energy, force, compulsion and need — which invari- 
ably held me spellbound. Despite my literary and artistic 
ambitions, I still continued to think it essential, to me, and 
to all men for that matter if they were to have any force 
and dignity in this world, that each and every one should 
be in control of something of this kind, something commer- 
cially and financially successful. And what was I — a pale 
sprout of a newspaper man, possibly an editor or author in 
the future, but what more? 

At times this state of mind tended to make me irritable 
and even savage instead of sad. I thought that my very gen- 
erous benefactor, the great McCullagh, ought to see what an 
important man I was and give me at once the dramatic edi- 
torship free and clear of any other work, or at least com- 
bine it with something better than mere reporting. I ought 
to be allowed to do editorials or special work. Again, my mind, 
although largely freed of Catholic and religious dogma gen- 
erally and the belief in the workability of the Christian ideals 

196 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 197 

as laid down in the Sermon on the Mount, was still swashing 
around among the idealistic maxims of Christ and the relig- 
ionists and moralists generally, contrasting them hourly, as 
it were, with the selfish materialism of the day as I saw it. 
Look at the strong men at the top, I was constantly saying 
to myself, «o comfortable, so indifferent, so cruelly dull. How 
I liked to flail them with maxims excerpted from Christ! 
Those large districts south of the business heart, along the 
river and elsewhere, which nightly or weekly Wood, McCord 
and myself were investigating and which were crowded with 
the unfit, the unsuccessful, the unhappy — how they haunted 
me and how I attempted (in my mind, of course) to indict 
society and comfort them with the poetic if helpless words 
of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed 
are the poor," etc. Betimes, interviewing one important citi- 
zen and another, I gained the impression that they truly 
despised any one who was poor, that they did not give him 
or his fate a second thought; and betimes I was right — 
other times wrong. But having been reared on maxims rela- 
tive to Christian duty I thought they should devote their 
all to the poor. This failure on their part seemed terrible to 
me, for having been taught to believe in the Sermon on the 
Mount I thought they — not myself, for instance — were the 
ones to make it work out. Mr. McCullagh had begun sending 
me out of town on various news stories, which was in itself 
the equivalent of a traveling correspondentship and might 
readily have led to my being officially recognized as such 
if I had remained there long enough. Trials of murder cases 
in St. Joseph and Hannibal, threatened floods in lower Illi- 
nois, and train robberies (common occurrences in this re- 
gion, either between St. Louis and Kansas City, or St. Louis 
and Louisville) made it necessary for me to make arrange- 
ments with Hazard or Wood to carry on my dramatic work 
while I went about these tasks; a necessity which I partly 
relished and partly disliked, being uncertain as to which 
was the more important task to me. 

However, I was far from satisfied. I was too restless and 
dissatisfied. Life, life, life, its contrasts, disappointments, 



198 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

lacks, enticements, was always prodding me. The sun might 
shine brightly, the winds of fortune blow favorably. Never- 
theless, though I might enjoy both, there was always this- 
undertone of something that was not happiness. I was not 
placed right. I was not this, I was not that. Life was 
slipping away fast (and I was twenty-one!). I could see 
the tiny sands of my little life's hourglass sifting down, and 
what was I achieving ? Soon the strength time, the love time, 
the gay time, of color and romance, would be gone, and if I 
had not spent it fully, joyously, richly what would there be 
left for me then ? The joys of a mythical heaven or here- 
after played no part in my calculations. When one was dead 
one was dead for all time. Hence the reason for the heartbreak 
over failure here and now ; the awful tragedy of a love lost, a 
youth never properly enjoyed. Think of living and yet not 
living in so thrashing a world as this, the best of one's hours 
passing unused or not properly used. Think of seeing this 
tinkling phantasmagoria of pain and pleasure, beauty and all 
its sweets, go by, and yet being compelled to be a bystander, a 
mere onlooker, enhungered but never satisfied! In this 
mood I worked on, doing sometimes good work because I was 
temporarily fascinated and entertained, at other times grum- 
bling and dawdling and moaning over what seemed to me the 
horrible humdrum of it all. 

One day, in just such a mood as this, I received the 
following final letter from Alice, from whom I had not heard 
now in months: 

"Dear Theo, 

"Tomorrow is my wedding-day. Tomorrow at twelve. This may 
strike you as strange. Well, I have waited — I don't know how long — 
it has seemed like years to me — for some word, but I knew it was 
not to be. Your last letter showed me that. I knew that you did not 

intend to return, and so I went back to Mr. . I had to. What 

else have I to look forward to? You know how unhappy I am here 
with my family, now that you are gone, in spite of how much they 
care for me. 

' ' Oh, Theo, you must think me foolish for writing this. I am 
ashamed of myself. Still, I wanted to let you know, and to say good-bye, 
for although you have been indifferent I cannot bear any hard feelings 

toward you. I will make Mr. a good wife. He understands I 

do not love him, but that I appreciate him. Tomorrow I will marry 
him, unless — unless something happens. You ought not to have told 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 199 

me that you loved me, Theo, unless you could have stayed with me. You 
have caused me so much pain. 

"But I must say good-bye. This is the last letter I shall ever write 
you. Don't send my letters now — tear them up. It is too late. Oh, 
if you only knew how hard it has been to bring myself to this! 

' ' Alice. ' ' 

I sat and stared at the floor after reading this. The pain 
I had caused was a heavy weight. The implication that if I 
would come to Chicago before noon of this day, or telegraph 
for her to delay, was too much. What if I should go to 
Chicago and get her — then what? To her it would be a 
beautiful thing, the height of romance, saving her from a 
cruel or dreary fate; but what of me? Should I be happy? 
Was my profession or my present restless and uncertain state 
of mind anything to base a marriage on? I knew it was not. 
... I also knew that Alice, in spite of my great sadness and 
affection for her, was really nothing more to me than a 
passing bit of beauty, charming in itself but of no great 
import to me. I was sad for her and for myself, saddest be- 
cause of that chief characteristic of mine and of life which 
will not let anything endure permanently : love, wealth, fame. 
I was too restless, too changeful. There rose before me a pic- 
ture of my finances as compared with what they ought to 'be, 
and of any future in marriage based on it. Actually, as I 
looked at it then, it was more the fault of life than mine. 

These thoughts, balancing with the wish I had for greater 
advancement, caused me as usual to hesitate. But I was in 
no danger of doing anything impulsive : there was no great 
impelling passion in this. It was mere sentiment, growing 
more and more roseate and less and less operative. I groaned 
inwardly, but night came and the next day, and I had not an- 
swered. At noon Alice had been married, as she afterward 
told me — years afterward, when the fire was all gone and this 
romance was ended forever. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

Thus it was that I dawdled about the city wondering what 
would become of me. My dramatic work, interesting as it 
was, was still so trivial in so far as the space given it 
and the public's interest in it were concerned as to make 
it all but worthless. The great McCullagh was not interested 
in the stage; the proof of it was that he entrusted this 
interesting department to me. But circumstances were 
bringing about an onward if not upward step. I was daily 
becoming so restless and unhappy that it would have been 
strange if something had not happened. To think that there 
was no more to this dramatic work for me than now ap- 
peared, and that in addition Mr. McCullagh was allowing 
Mr. Mitchell to give me afternoon and night or out-of-town 
assignments when I had important theatrical performances 
to report ! As a matter of fact they were not important, but 
Mitchell had no consideration for my critical work. He 
continued to give me two or three things to do on nights 
when, as he knew or I thought he should, I should spend the 
evening witnessing a single performance. This was to pay 
me out, so I thought, for going over his head. I grew more 
and more resentful, and finally a catastrophe occurred. 

It happened that one Sunday night late in April three 
shows were scheduled to arrive in the city, each performance 
being worthy of special attention. Nearly all new shows 
opened in St. Louis on Sunday night and it was impossible 
for me to attend them all in one evening. I might have 
given both Dick and Peter tickets and asked them to help 
me, but I decided, since this was a custom practiced by my 
predecessor at times, to write up the notices beforehand, 
the facts being culled from various press-agent accounts al- 
ready in my hands, and then comment more fully on the 
plays in some notes which I published mid-week. It hap- 

200 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 201 

pened, however, that on this particular evening Mr. Mitchell 
had other plans for me. Without consulting me or my theat- 
rical duties he handed me at about seven in the evening a 
slip of paper containing a notice of a street-car hold-up in 
the far western suburbs of the city. I was about to protest 
that my critical work demanded my presence elsewhere but 
concluded to hold my tongue. He would merely advise me to 
write up the notices of the shows, as I had planned, or, worse 
yet, tell me to let other people do them. I thought once of 
going to McCullagh and protesting, but finally went my way 
determined to do the best I could and protest later. I would 
hurry up on this assignment and then come back and visit 
the theaters. 

When I reached the scene of the supposed hold-up there 
was nothing to guide me. The people at the car-barns did 
not know anything about it and the crew that had been 
held up was not present. I visited a far outlying police sta- 
tion but the sergeant in charge could tell me nothing more 
than that the crime was not very important, a few dollars 
stolen. I went to the exact spot but there were no houses 
in the neighborhood, only a barren stretch of track lying out 
in a rain-soaked plain. It was a gloomy, wet night, and I 
decided to return to the city. When I reached a car-line it 
was late, too late for me to do even a part of my critical work ; 
the long distance out and the walks to the car-barn and the 
police station had consumed much time. As I neared the city 
I found that it was eleven o'clock. What chance had I to 
visit the theaters then? I asked myself angrily. How was I 
to know if the shows had even arrived? There had been 
heavy rains all over the West for the last week and there 
had been many wash-outs. 

I finally got off in front of the nearest theater and went up 
to the door ; it was silent and dark. I thought of asking the 
drugman who occupied a corner of the building, but that 
seemed a silly thing to be doing at this hour and I let it go. 
I thought of telephoning to the rival paper, the Republic, 
when I reached the office, but when I got there I had first 
to report to Mitchell, who was just leaving, and then, irri- 



202 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

tated and indifferent, I put it off for the moment. Perhaps 
Hartung would know. 

"Do you know what time the first edition goes to press 
here, Hugh?" I asked him at a quarter after twelve. 

' ' Twelve-thirty, I think. The telegraph man can tell you. ' ' 

"Do you, know whether the dramatic stuff I sent up this 
afternoon gets in that ? ' ' 

"Sure — at least I think it does. You'd better ask the 
foreman of the composing-room about it, though." 

I went upstairs. Instead of calling up the Republic at 
once, or any of the managers of the theaters, or knocking out 
the notices entirely, I inquired how matters stood with the 
first edition. I was not sure that there was any reason 
for worrying about the shows not arriving, but something 
kept telling me to make sure. 

At last I found that the first edition had been closed, with 
the notices in it, and went to the telephone to call up the 
'Republic. Then the. dramatic editor of that paper had gone 
and I could not find the address of a single manager. I tried 
to reach one of the theaters, but there was no response. The 
clock registered twelve-thirty by then, and I weakly concluded 
that things must be all right or that if they weren 't I couldn 't 
help it. I then went home and to bed and slept poorly, troub- 
led by the thought that something might be wrong and wish- 
ing now that I had not been so lackadaisical about it all. 
"Why. couldn't I attend to things at the proper time instead 
of dawdling about in this fashion? I sighed and tried to 
sleep. 

The next morning I arose and went through the two morn- 
ing papers without losing any time. To my horror and dis- 
tress, there in the Republic was an announcement on the 
first page to the effect that owing to various wash-outs in 
several States none of the three shows had arrived the night 
before. And in my own paper, to my great pain was a 
full account of the performances and the agreeable reception 
accorded them! 

"Oh, Lord!" I groaned. "What will McCullagh say? 
What will the other papers say? Three shows reviewed, and 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 203 

not one here ! ' ' And in connection with one I had written : 
"A large and enthusiastic audience received Mr. Sol Smith 
Russell" as the Grand. And in connection with another that 
the gallery of Pope's Theater "was top-heavy." The per- 
spiration burst from my forehead. Remembering Sisseretta 
Jones and my tendency to draw the lightning of public ob- 
servation and criticism, I began to speculate as to what news- 
paper criticism would follow this last faux pas. "Great 
God!" I thought. "Wait till he sees this!" and I was ready 
to weep. At once I saw myself not only the laughing-stock 
of the town but discharged as well. Think of being discharged 
now, after all my fine dreams as to the future ! 

"Without delay I proceeded to the office and removed my few 
belongings, resolved to be prepared for the worst. With the 
feeling that I owed Mr. McCullagh an explanation I sat 
down and composed a letter to him in which I explained, 
from my point of view, just how the thing had happened. I 
did not attack Mr. Mitchell or seek to shield myself but merely 
illustrated how I had been expected to handle my critical 
work in this office. I also added how kind I thought he had 
been, how much I valued his personal regard, and asked him 
not to think too ill of me. This letter I placed in an enve- 
lope addressed to "Mr. Joseph B. McCullagh, Personal," 
and going into his private office before any others had come 
down laid it on his desk. Then I retired to my room to await 
the afternoon papers and think. 

They were not long in appearing, and neither of the two 
leading afternoon papers had failed to notice the blunder. 
With the most delicate, laughing raillery they had seized upon 
this latest error of the great Globe as a remarkable demon- 
stration of what they affected to believe was its editor's 
lately acquired mediumistic and psychic powers. The Globe 
was regularly writing up various seances, slate-writing de- 
monstrations and the like, in St. Louis and elsewhere, things 
which Mr. McCullagh was interested in or considered good 
circulation builders, and this was now looked upon as a fresh 
demonstration of his development in that line. "Oh, Lord! 
Oh, Lord!" I groaned when I read the following: 



204 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

"To see three shows at once," observed the Post-Dispatch, 
"and those three widely separated by miles of country and 
washed-out sections of railroad in three different States (Illi- 
nois, Iowa and Missouri), is indeed a triumph; but also to 
see them as having arrived, or as they would have been had 
they arrived, and displaying their individual delights to three 
separate audiences of varying proportions assembled for that 
purpose is truly amazing, one of the finest demonstrations 
of mediumship — or perhaps we had better say materializa- 
tion — yet known to science. Great, indeed, is McCullagh. 
Great the G.-D. Indeed, now that we think of it, it is an 
achievement so astounding that even the Globe may well be 
proud of it — one of the finest flights of which the human mind 
or the great editor's psychic strength is capable. We venture 
to say that no spiritualist or materializing medium has ever 
outrivaled it. We have always known that Mr. McCullagh 
is a great man. The illuminating charm of his editorial 
page is sufficient proof of that. But this latest essay of his 
into the realm of combined dramatic criticism, supernatural 
insight, and materialization, is one of the most perfect things 
of its kind and can only be attributed to genius in the purest 
form. It is psychic, supernatural, spooky." 

The Evening Chronicle for its part troubled to explain "how 
ably and interestedly the spirit audiences and actors, although 
they might as well have been resting, the actors at least not 
having any contract which compelled their subconscious or 
psychic selves to work, had conducted themselves, doing their 
parts without a murmur. It was also here hinted that in 
future it would not be necessary for the Globe to carry a 
dramatic critic, seeing that the psychic mind of its chief was 
sufficient. Anyhow it was plain that the race was fast reach- 
ing that place where it could perceive in advance that which 
was about to take place ; in proof of this it pointed of course 
to the noble mind which now occupied the editorial chair of 
the Globe-Democrat, seeing all this without moving from his 
office. 

I was agonized. Sweat rolled from my forehead ; my nerves 
twitched. And to think that this was the second time within 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 205 

no more than a month that I had made my great benefactor 
the laughing-stock of the city! What must he think of 
me? I could see him at that moment reading these editorials. 
.... He would discharge me. . . . 

Not knowing what to do, I sat and brooded. Gone were all 
my fine dreams, my great future, my standing in the eyes 
of men and of this paper ! What was to become of me now ? 
I saw myself returning to Chicago — to do what? What 
would Peter, Dick, Hazard, Johnson, Bellairs, all my new 
found friends, think? Instead of going boldly to the office 
and seeing my friends, who were still fond of me if laugh- 
ing at my break, or Mr. McCullagh, I slipped about the city 
meditating on my fate and wondering what I was to do. 

For at least a week, during the idlest hours of the morning 
and evening, I would slip out and get a little something to 
eat or loiter in an old but little-frequented book-store in Wal- 
nut Street, hoping to keep myself out of sight and out of 
mind. In .a spirit of intense depression I picked up a few 
old books, deciding to read more, to make myself more fit 
for life. I also decided to leave St. Louis, since no one would 
have me here, and began to think of Chicago, whether I could 
stand it to return there, or whether I had better drift on to a 
strange place. But how should I live or travel, since I had 
very little money — having wasted it, as I now thought, on 
riotous living ! The unhappy end of a spendthrift ! 

Finally, after mooning about for a day or two more I 
concluded that I should have to leave my fine room and try 
to earn some money here -so as to be able to leave. And so 
one morning, without venturing near the Globe and giving 
the principal meeting-places of reporters and friends a wide 
berth, I went into the office of the St. Louis Republic, then 
thriving fairly well in an old building at Third and Chestnut 
streets. Here with a heavy heart, I awaited the coming of the 
city editor, H. B. Wandell, of whom I had heard a great deal 
but whom I had never seen. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

The Republic was in a tumbledown old building in a fairly 
deserted neighborhood in that region near the waterfront 
from which the city proper had been steadily growing away 
for years. This paper, if I am not mistaken, was founded 
in 1808. 

The office was so old and rattletrap that it was discourag- 
ing. The elevator was a slow and wheezy box, bumping and 
creaking and suggesting immediate collapse. The boards of 
the entrance-hall and the city editorial room squeaked under 
one 's feet. The city reportorial room, where I should work if 
I secured a place, was larger than that of the Globe and 
higher-ceiled, but beyond that it had no advantage. The win- 
dows were tall but cracked and patched with faded yellow 
copy-paper; the desks, some fifteen or twenty all told, were 
old, dusty, knife-marked, smeared with endless ages of paste 
and ink. There was waste paper and rubbish on the floor. 
There was no sign of either paint or wallpaper. The windows 
facing east looked out upon a business court or alley where 
trucks and vans creaked all day but which at night was silent 
as the grave, as was this entire wholesale neighborhood. The 
buildings directly opposite were decayed wholesale houses 
of some unimportant kind where in slimsy rags of dresses 
or messy trousers and shirts girls and boys of from fourteen 
to twenty worked all day, the girls' necks in summer time 
open to their breasts and their sleeves rolled to their 
shoulders, the boys in sleeveless undershirts and tight-belted 
trousers and with tousled hair. What their work was I for- 
get, but flirting with each other or with the reporters and 
printers of this paper occupied a great deal of their time. 

The city editor, H. B. Wandell, was one of those odd, 
forceful characters who because of my youth and extreme 
impressionability perhaps and his own vigor and point of view 

206 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 207 

succeeded in making a deep impression on me at once. He 
was such a queer little man, so different from Mitchell and 
McCullagh, nervous, jumpy, restless, vigorous, with eyes so 
piercing that they reminded one of a hawk's and a skin so 
swarthy that it was Italian in quality and made all the more 
emphatic by a large, humped, protruding nose pierced by big 
nostrils. His hands were wrinkled and claw-like, and he had 
large yellowish teeth which showed rather fully when he 
laughed. And that laugh ! I can hear it yet, a cross between 
a yelp and a cackle. It always seemed to me to be a mirthless 
laugh, insincere, and yet also it had an element of apprecia- 
tion in it. He could see a point at which others ought to laugh 
without apparently enjoying it himself. He was at once a 
small and yet a large man mentally, wise and incisive in many 
ways, petty and even venomous in others, a man to coddle and 
placate if you were beholden to him, one to avoid if you were 
not, but on the whole a man above the average in ability. 

And he had the strangest, fussiest, bossiest love of great 
literature of any one I have ever known, especially in the 
realm of the newspapers. Zola at this time was apparently 
his ideal of what a writer should be, and after him Balzac and 
Loti. He seemed to know them well and to admire and even 
love them, after his fashion. He was always calling upon me 
to imitate Zola's vivid description of the drab and the gross 
and the horrible if I could, assuming that I had read him, 
which I had not, but I did not say so. And Balzac's and 
Loti 's sure handling of the sensual and the poignant ! How 
often have I heard him refer to them with admiration, giving 
me the line and phrase of certain stark pictures, and yet at 
the same time there was a sneaking bending of the knee to the 
middle West conventions of which he was a part, a kind of 
horror of having it known that he approved of these things. 
He was a Shriner and very proud of it, as he was of various 
other local organizations to which he belonged. He had the 
reputation of being one of the best city editors in the city, 
far superior to my late master. Previously he had been city 
editor of the Globe itself for many years and was still favor- 
ably spoken of in that office. After I left St. Louis he re- 



208 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

turned to the Globe for a time and once more became its 
guide in local news. 

But that is neither here nor there save as it illustrates what 
is a cardinal truth of the newspaper world: that the best of 
newspaper men are occasionally to be found on the poorest 
of papers, and vice versa. Just at this time, as I understood, 
he was here because the Republic was making a staggering 
effort to build itself up in popular esteem, which it finally 
succeeded in doing after McCullagh's death, becoming once 
more the leading morning paper as it had been before the 
Globe, under McCullagh, arose to power. Just now, how- 
ever, in my despondent mood, it seemed an exceedingly sad 
affair. 

Mr. "Wandell, as I now learned, had heard of me and my 
recent faux pas, as well as some of the other things I had 
been doing. 

"Been working on the Globe, haven't you?" he com- 
mented when I approached him. ' ' What did they pay you ? ' ' 

I told him. 

' ' When did you leave there ? ' ' 

"About a week ago." 

"Why did you leave?" 

"Perhaps you saw those notices of three shows that didn't 
come to town? I'm the man who wrote them up." 

' ' Oho ! ho ! ho ! " and he began eyeing me drily and 
slapping his knee. "I saw those. Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha! 
Yes, that was very funny — very. We had an editorial on it. 
And so McCullagh fired you, did he ? " 

"No, sir," I replied indignantly. "I quit. I thought he 
might want to, and I put a letter on his desk and left. ' ' 

' ' Ha ! ha ! ha ! Quite right ! That 's very funny ! I know 
just how they do over there. I was city editor there myself 
once. They write them up in advance sometimes. We do here. 
Where do you come from?" 

I told him. He meditated awhile, as though he were un- 
certain whether he needed any one. 

"You say you got thirty dollars there? I couldn't pay 
anybody that much here — not to begin with. We never give 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 209 

more than eighteen to begin with. Besides, I have a full 
staff just now, and it's summer. I might use another man 
if eighteen would be enough. You might think it over and 
come in and see me again some time." 

Although my spirits fell at so great a drop in salary I has- 
tened to explain that I would be glad to accept eighteen. I 
needed to be at work again. 

"Whatever you would consider fair would suit me," I 
said. 

He smiled. "The newspaper market is low just now. If 
your work proves satisfactory I may raise you a little later 
on. ' ' He must have seen that he had a soft and more or less 
unsophisticated boy to deal with. 

"Suppose you write me a little article about something, 
just to show me what you can do," he added. 

I went away insulted by this last request. In spite of all 
he said I could feel that he wanted me; but I had no skill 
in manipulating my own affairs. To drop from thirty dollars 
as dramatic editor to eighteen as a mere reporter was terrible. 
With a grain of philosophic melancholy I faced it, however, 
feeling that if I worked hard I might yet get a start in some 
way or other. I must work and save some money and if I 
did not better myself I would leave St. Louis. My ability 
must be worth something somewhere; it had been on the 
Globe. 

I went home and wrote the article (a mere nothing about 
some street scene), went back to the office and left it. Next 
day I called again. 

"All right," he said. "You can go to work." 

I went back into that large shabby room and took a seat. 
In a few minutes the place filled up with the staff, most of 
whom I knew and all of whom eyed me curiously — reporters, 
special editors, the city editor and his assistant, Mr. Williams 
of blessed memory, one-eyed, sad, impressive, intelligent, who 
had nothing but kind things to say of what I wrote and who 
was friendly and helpful until the day I left. 

In a little while the assignment book was put out, with the 
task I was to undertake. Before I left I was called in and 



210 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

advised concerning it. I went and looked into it (I have for- 
gotten what it was) and reported later in the day. What I 
wrote I turned over to Mr. Williams, and later in the day 
when I asked him if it was all right he said : ' ' Yes, quite all 
right. It reads all right to me," and then gave me a kindly, 
one-eyed smile. I liked him from the first day; he was a 
better editor than Wandell, with more taste and discrimina- 
tion, and later rose to a higher position elsewhere. 

'Meanwhile I strolled about thinking of my great fall. It 
seemed as though I should never get over this. But in a few 
days I was back in my old reportorial routine, depressed but 
secure, convinced that I could write as well as ever, and for 
any newspaper. 

For the romance of my own youth was still upon me, my 
ambitions and my dreams coloring it all. Does the gull 
sense the terrors of the deep, or the butterfly the traps and 
snares of the woods and fields? Roaming this keen, new, 
ambitious mid- Western city, life-hungry and love-hungry and 
underpaid, eager and ambitious, I still found so much in the 
worst to soothe, so much in the best to torture me. In every 
scene of ease or pleasure was both a lure and a reproach; 
in every aspect of tragedy or poverty was a threat or a warn- 
ing. I was never tired of looking at the hot, hungry, weary 
slums, any more than I was of looking at the glories of the 
mansions of the west end. Both had their lure, their charm ; 
one because it was a state worse than my own, the other be- 
cause it was a better — unfairly so, I thought. Amid it all I 
hurried, writing and dreaming, half-laughing and half-cry- 
ing, with now a tale to move me to laughter and now another 
to send me to bottomless despairs. But always youth, youth, 
and the crash of the presses in the basement and a fresh damp 
paper laid on my desk of a morning with ' ' the news ' ' and my 
own petty achievements or failures to cheer or disappoint 
me ; so it went, day in and day out. 

The Republic, while not so successful as the Globe-Demo- 
crat, was a much better paper for me to work on. For one 
thing, it took me from under the domination of Mr. Mitchell 
(one can hate some people most persistently), and placed 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 211 

me under one who, whatever may have been his defects, pro- 
vided me with far greater opportunities for my pen than 
ever the Globe had and supplied a better judgment as to 
what constituted a story and a news feature. Now that I 
think of him, "Wandell was far and away the best judge of 
news, from a dramatic or story point of view, of any for 
whom I ever worked. 

' ' A good story, is it ? " I can see him smirking and rubbing 
his hands miser or gourmet fashion, as over a pot of gold or 
a fine dish. "She said that, did she? Ha! ha! That's 
excellent, excellent ! You saw him yourself, did you ? And 
the brother too ? By George, we '11 make a story of that ! 
Be careful how you write that now. All the facts you know, 
just as far as they will carry you; but we don't want any 
libel suits, remember. We don't want you to say anything 
we can't substantiate, but I don't want you to be afraid 
either. Write it strong, clear, definite. Get in all the touches 
of local color you can. And remember Zola and Balzac, my 
boy, remember Zola and Balzac. Bare facts are what are 
needed in cases like this, with lots of color as to the scenery 
or atmosphere, the room, the other people, the street, and all 
that. You get me?" 

And quite truly I got him, as he was pleased to admit, 
even though I got but little cash out of it. I always felt, 
perhaps unjustly, that he made but small if any effort to 
advantage me in any way except that of writing. But what 
of it? He was nearly always enthusiastic over my work, 
in a hard, bright, waspish way, nearly always excited about 
the glittering realistic facts which one might dig up and which 
he was quite determined that his paper should present. The 
stories ! The scandals ! That hard, cruel cackle of his when 
he had any one cornered! He must have known what a 
sham and a fake most of these mid- Western pretensions to 
sanctity and purity were, and yet if he did and was irritated 
by them he said little to me. Like most Americans of the 
time, he was probably confused by the endless clatter con- 
cerning personal perfection, the Christ ideal, as opposed to 
the actual details of life. He could not decide for himself 



212 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

which was true and which false, the Christ theory or that of 
Zola, but he preferred Zola when interpreting the news. 
When things were looking up from a news point of view and 
great realistic facts were coming to the surface regardless 
of local sentiment, facts which utterly contradicted all the 
noble fol-de-rol of the puritans and the religionists, he was 
positively transformed. In those hours when the loom of life 
seemed to be weaving brilliant dramatic or tragic patterns 
of a realistic, Zolaesque character he was beside himself with 
gayety, trotting to and fro in the local room, leaning over the 
shoulders of scribbling scribes and interrupting them to ask 
details or to caution them as to certain facts which they must 
or must not include, beaming at the ceiling or floor, whistling, 
singing, rubbing his hands — a veritable imp or faun of pleas- 
ure and enthusiasm. Deaths, murders, great social or poli- 
tical scandals or upheavals, those things which presented the 
rough, raw facts of life, as well as its tenderer aspects, seemed 
to throw him into an ecstasy — not over the woes of others 
but over the fact that he was to have an interesting paper 
tomorrow. 

"Ah, it was a terrible thing, was it? He killed her in 
cold blood, you say ? There was a great crowd out there, was 
there? Well, well, write it all up. Write it all up. It looks 
like a pretty good story to me — doesn't it to you? Write a 
good strong introduction for it, you know, all the facts in 
the first paragraph, and then go on and tell your story. 
You can have as much space for it as you want — a column, 
a column and a half, two — just as it runs. Let me look at 
it before you turn it in, though." Then he wouhi begin 
whistling or singing, or would walk up and down in the city- 
room rubbing his hands in obvious satisfaction. 

And how that reportorial room seemed to thrill or sing 
between the hours of five and seven in the evening, when the 
stories of the afternoon were coming in, or between ten-thirty 
and midnight, when the full grist of the day was finally being 
ground out. How it throbbed with human life and thought, 
quite like a mill room full of looms or a counting house in 
which endless records and exchanges are being made. Those 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 213 

reporters, eighteen or twenty of them, bright, cheerful, inter- 
esting, forceful youths, each bent upon making a name for 
himself, each working hard, each here bending over his desk 
scratching his head or ear and thinking, his mind lost in the 
mazes of arrangement and composition. 

Wandell had no tolerance for any but the best of news- 
paper reporters and would discharge a man promptly for 
falling down on a story, especially if he could connect it 
with the feeling that he was not as good a newspaper man 
as he should be. He hated commonplace men, and once I 
had become familiar with the office and with him, he would 
often ask me in a spirit of unrest if I knew of an especially 
good one anywhere with whom he could replace some one 
else whom he did not like; a thought which jarred me but 
which did not prevent me from telling him. Somehow I had 
an eye and a taste for exceptional men myself, and I wanted 
his staff to be as good as any. So it was not long before he 
began to rely on me to supply him with suitable men, so much 
so that I soon had the reputation of being a local arbiter of 
jobs, one who could get men in or keep them out — a thing 
which made me some enemies later. And it really was not 
true for I could not have kept any good man out. 

In the meantime, while he was trying me out to suit 
himself, he had been giving me only routine work : the North 
Seventh Street police station afternoons and evenings, where 
one or two interesting stories might be expected every day, 
crimes or sordid romances of one kind or another. Or if 
there was nothing much doing there I might be sent out on 
an occasional crime story elsewhere. Once I had handled a 
few of these for him, and to his satisfaction, I was pushed 
into the topnotch class and given only the most difficult 
stories, those which might be called feature crimes and sen- 
sations, which I was expected to unravel, sometimes single- 
handed, and to which always I was expected to write the 
lead. This realistic method of his plus a keen desire to 
unload all the heavy assignments on me was in no wise bad for 
me. He liked me, and this was his friendly way of showing it. 

Indeed, with a ruthless inconsiderateness, as I then thought, 



214 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

he piled on story after story, -until I was a little infuriated 
at first, seeing how little I was being paid. When nothing of 
immediate importance was to he had, he proceeded to create 
news, studying out interesting phases of past romances or 
crimes which he thought might be worth while to work up and 
publish on Sunday, and handing them to me to do over. 
He even created stories when the general news was dull, 
throwing me into the most delicate and dangerous fields of 
arson, murder, theft, marital unhappiness, and tragedies of 
all kinds, things not public but which by clever detective 
work could be made so, and where libel and other suits and 
damages lurked on either hand. Without cessation, Sunday 
and every other day, he called upon me to display sentiment, 
humor or cold, hard, descriptive force, as the case might be, 
quoting now Hugo, now Balzac, now Dickens, and now Zola 
to me to show me just what was to be done. In a little while, 
despite my reduced salary and the fact that I had lost my 
previous place in disgrace and was not likely to get a raise 
here soon, I was as much your swaggering newspaper youth 
as ever, strolling about the city with the feeling that I was 
somebody and looking up all my old friends, with the idea 
of letting them know that I was by no means such a failure 
as they might imagine. Dick and Peter of course, seeing 
me ambling in on them late one hot night, received me with 
open arms. 

"Well, you're a good one !" yelped Dick in his high, almost 
falsetto voice when I came in. I could see that he had been 
sitting before his open window, which commanded Broadway, 
where he had been no doubt meditating — your true romancer. 
"Where the hell have you been keeping yourself? You're 
a dandy! We've been looking for you for weeks. We've 
been down to your place a dozen times, but you wouldn't let 
us in. You're a dandy, you are! McCord has some more of 
those opera cartoons done. Why didn't you ever come 
around, anyhow?" 

"I'm working down on the Republic now," I replied, 
blushing, "and I've been busy." 

' ' Oho ! ' ' laughed Dick, slapping his knees. ' ' That 's a good 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 215 

one on you! I heard about it. Those shows written up, and 
not one in town! Oho! That's good!" He coughed a con- 
sumptive cough or two and relaxed. 

I laughed with him. ' ' It wasn 't really all my fault, ' ' I said 
apologetically. 

"I know it wasn't. Don't I know the Globe? Didn't 
Carmichael get me to work the same racket for him? Ask 
Hazard. It wasn't your fault. Sit down. Peter '11 be here 
in a little while; then we'll go out and get something." 

We fell to discussing the attitude of the people on the 
Globe after I had left. Wood insisted that he had not heard 
much. He knew instinctively that Mitchell was glad I was 
gone, as he might well have been. Hartung had reported to 
him that McCullagh had raised Cain with Mitchell and that 
two or three of the boys on the staff had manifested relief. 

"You know who they'd be," continued Wood. "The fel- 
lows who can 't do what you can but would like to. ' ' 

I smiled. "I know about who they are," I said. 

We talked about the world in general — literature, the 
drama, current celebrities, the state of politics, all seen 
through the medium of youth and aspiration and inexperi- 
ence. While we were talking McCord came in. He had been 
to his home in South St. Louis, where he preferred to live 
in spite of his zest for Bohemia, and the ground had all to 
be gone over with him. We settled down to an evening's 
enjoyment : Dick went for beer ; Peter lit a rousing pipe. Ac- 
cumulated short stories were produced and plans for new 
ones recounted. At one point Peter exclaimed: "You know 
what I 'm going to do, Dreiser ? ' ' 

"Well, what?" 

"I'm going to study for the leading role in that opera of 
yours. I can play that, and I'm going to if you don't object 
—do you?" 

"Object? Why should I object?" I replied, doubtful how- 
ever of the wisdom of this. Peter had never struck me as 
quite the actor type. "I'd like to see you do it if you can, 
Peter." 

"Oh, I can, all right. That old rube appeals to me. I 



216 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

bet that if I ever get on the stage I can get away with that." 
He eyed Dick for confirmation. 

"I'll bet you could," said Dick loyally. "Peter makes a 
dandy rube. Oh, will you ever forget the time we went 
down to the old Nickelodeon and did a turn, Peter ? Oho ! ' ' 

Later the three of us left for a bite and I could see that I 
was as high in their favor as ever, which restored me not a 
little. Peter seemed to think that my escapades and mishaps, 
coupled with the attention and discussion which my name 
evoked among local newspaper men, were doing me good, 
making me an interesting figure. I could scarcely believe that 
but I was inclined to believe that I had not fallen as low as at 
first I had imagined. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

The LaClede, as I have indicated, was the center of all 
gossiping newspaper life at this time, at least that part of 
it of which I knew anything. Here, in idling groups, during 
the course of a morning, afternoon or evening, might appear 
Dick or Peter, Body, Clark, Hazard, Johnson, Root, Johns 
Daws, a long company of excellent newspaper men who worked 
on the different papers of the city from time to time and who, 
because of a desire for companionship in this helter-skelter 
world and the certainty of finding it here, hung about this cor- 
ner. Here one could get in on a highly intellectual or divert- 
ing conversation of one kind or another at almost any time. 
So many of these men had come from distant cities and knew 
them much better than they did St. Louis. As a rule, being 
total strangers and here only for a short while, they were in- 
clined to sniff at conditions as they found them here and to 
boast of those elsewhere, especially the men who came from 
New York, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago. I was 
one of those who, knowing Chicago and St. Louis only and 
wishing to appear wise in these matters, boasted vigorously of 
the superlative importance of Chicago as a city, whereas 
such men as Root of New York, Johnson of Boston, Ware of 
New Orleans, and a few others, merely looked at me and 
smiled. 

"All I have to say to you, young fellow," young Root 
once observed to me genially if roughly after one of these 
heated and senseless arguments, "is wait till you go to 
New York and see for yourself. I've been to Chicago, and it's 
a way-station in comparison. It's the only other city you've 
seen, and that's why you think it's so great." There was 
a certain amount of kindly toleration in his voice which in- 
furiated me. 

"Ah, you're crazy," I replied. "You're like all New 

217 



218 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Yorkers : you think you know it all. You won 't admit you 're 
beaten when you are." 

The argument proceeded through all the different aspects 
of the two cities until finally we called each other damned 
fools and left in a huff. Years later, however, having seen 
New York, I wanted to apologize if ever I met him again. 
The two cities, as I then learned, each individual and wonder- 
ful in its way, were not to be contrasted. But how sure I 
was of my point of view then ! 

Nearly all of these young men, as I now saw, presented a 
sharp contrast to those I had known in Chicago, or perhaps 
the character of the work in this city and my own changing 
viewpoint made them seem different. Chicago at that time 
had seemed to be full of exceptional young men in the re- 
portorial world, men who in one way or another had already 
achieved considerable local repute as writers and coming men : 
Finley Peter Dunne, George Ade, Brand "Whitlock, Ben King, 
Charles Stewart, and many others, some of whom even in that 
day were already signing their names to some of their con- 
tributions; whereas here in St. Louis, few if any of us had 
achieved any local distinction of any kind. No one of us had 
as yet created a personal or literary following. We could not, 
here, apparently; the avenues were not the same. And none 
of us was hailed as certain to attract attention in the larger 
world outside. We formed little more than a weak scholastic 
brotherhood or union, recognizing each other genially enough 
as worthy fellow-craftsmen but not offering each other much 
consolation in our rough state beyond a mere class or profes- 
sional recognition as working newspaper men. Yet at times 
this LaClede was a kind of tonic bear garden, or mental wres- 
tling-place, where unless one were very guarded and sure of 
oneself one might come by a quick and hard fall, as when once 
in some argument in regard to a current political question, 
and without knowing really what I was talking about, I made 
the statement that palaeontology indicated so-and-so, where- 
upon one of my sharp confreres suddenly took me up with: 
' ' Say, what is palaeontology, anyhow ? Do you know ? ' ' 

I was completely stumped, for I didn't. It was a com- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 219 

paratively new word, outside the colleges, being used here 
and there in arguments and editorials, and I had glibly taken 
it over. I floundered about and finally had to confess that I 
did not know what it was, whereupon I endured a laugh for 
my pains. I was thereafter wiser and more cautious. 

But this, in my raw, ignorant state, was a very great help to 
me. Many of these men were intelligent and informed to the 
cutting point in regard to many facts of life of which I was 
extremely ignorant. Many of them had not only read more 
but seen more, and took my budding local pretensions to being 
somebody with a very large grain of salt. At many of the 
casual meetings, where at odd moments reporters and some- 
times editors were standing or sitting about and discussing 
one phase of life and another, I received a back-handed slap 
which sometimes jarred my pride but invariably widened 
my horizon. 

One of the most interesting things in my life at this time 
was that same North Seventh Street police station previously 
mentioned, to which I went daily and which was a center for 
a certain kind of news at least — rapes, riots, murders, fan- 
tastic family complications of all kinds, so common to very 
poor and highly congested neighborhoods. This particular 
station was the very center of a mixed ghetto, slum and negro 
life, which even at this time was still appalling to me in some 
of its aspects. It was all so dirty, so poor, so stuffy, so starve- 
ling. There were in it all sorts of streets — Jewish, negro, and 
run-down American, or plain slum, the first crowded with 
long-bearded Jews and their fat wives, so greasy, smelly and 
generally offensive that they sickened me: rag-pickers, 
chicken-dealers and feather-sorters all. In their streets the 
smell of these things, picked or crated chickens, many of 
them partially decayed, decayed meats and vegetables, half- 
sorted dirty feathers and rags and I know not what else, was 
sickening in hot weather. In the negro streets — or rather 
alleys, for they never seemed to occupy any general thorough- 
fare — were rows or one-, two-, three- and four-story shacks 
or barns of frame or brick crowded into back yards and with 
thousands of blacks of the most shuffling and idle character 



220 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

"hanging about. In these hot days of June, July and August 
they seemed to do little save sit or lie in the shade of build- 
ings in this vicinity and swap yarns or contemplate the world 
with laughter or in silence. Occasionally there was a fight, 
a murder or a low love affair among them which justified 
my time here. In addition, there were those other streets of 
soggy, decayed Americans — your true slum — filled with as 
low and cantankerous a population of whites as one would 
find anywhere, a type of animal dangerous to the police 
themselves, for they could riot and kill horribly and were 
sullen at best. Invariably the police traveled here in pairs, 
and whenever an alarm from some policeman on his beat was 
turned in from this region a sergeant and all the officers in 
the station at the time would set forth to the rescue, sometimes 
as many as eight or ten in a police wagon, with orders, as I 

myself have heard them given, "to club the heads off 

them" or "break their bones, but bring them in here. 

I '11 fix 'em " ; in response to which all the stolid Irish huskies 
would go forth to battle, returning frequently with a whole 
vanload of combatants or alleged combatants, all much the 
worse for the contest. 

There was an old fat Irish sergeant of about fifty or fifty- 
five, James King by name, who used to amuse me greatly. He 
ruled here like a potentate under the captain, whom I rarely 
saw. The latter had an office to himself in the front of the 
station and rarely came out, seeming always to be busy with 
bigwigs of one type and another. With the sergeant, how- 
ever, I became great friends. His place was behind the central 
desk, in the front of which were two light standards and on 
the surface of which were his blotter and reports of different 
kinds. Behind the desk was his big tilted swivel chair, with 
himself in it, stout, perspiring, coatless, vestless, collarless, 
his round head and fat neck beady with sweat, his fat arms 
and hands moist and laid heavily over his protuberant 
stomach. According to him, he had been at this work exactly 
eight years, and before that he had "beat the sidewalk," as 
he said, or traveled a beat. 

"Yes, yes, 'tis a waarm avenin'," he would begin whenever 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 221 

I arrived and he was not busy, which usually he was not, 
"an' there's naathin' for ye, me lad. But ye might just as 
well take a chair an' make yerself comfortable. It may be that 
something will happen, an' again maybe it won't. Ye must 
hope fer the best, as the sayin' is. 'Tis a bad time fer any 
trouble to be breakin' out though, in all this hot weather," 
and then he would elevate a large palmleaf fan which he 
kept near and begin to fan himself, or swig copiously from 
a pitcher of ice-water. 

Here then he would sit, answering telephone calls from 
headquarters or marking down reports from the men on their 
beats or answering the complaints of people who came in hour 
after hour to announce that they had been robbed or their 
homes had been broken into or that some neighbor was 
making a nuisance of himself or their wives or husbands or 
sons or daughters wouldn't obey them or stay in at night. 

"Yes, an' what's the matter now?" he would begin when 
one of these would put in an appearance. 

Perhaps it was a man who would be complaining that his 
wife or daughter would not stay in at night, or a woman 
complaining so of her husband, son or daughter. 

"Well, me good woman, I can't be helpin' ye with that. 
This is no court av laaw. If yer husband don't support ye, 
er yer son don't come in av nights an' he's a minor, ye can 
get an order from the judge at the Four Courts compellin' 
him. Then if he don't mind ye and ye waant him arrested 
er locked up, I can help ye that way, but not otherwise. Go 
to the Four Courts." 

Sometimes, in the case of a parent complaining of a 
daughter's or son's disobedience, he would relent a little and 
say: "See if ye can bring him around here. Tell him that 
the captain waants to see him. Then if he comes I'll see what 
I can do fer ye. Maybe I can scare him a bit." 

Let us say they came, a shabby, overworked mother or 
father leading a recalcitrant boy or girl. King would assume 
a most ferocious air and after listening to the complaint of 
the parent as if it were all news to him would demand: 
"What's ailin' ye? Why can't ye stay in nights? What's 



222 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the matter with ye that ye can't obey yer mother? Don't ye 
know it's agin the laaw fer a minor to be stayin' out aafter 
ten at night? Ye don't? Well, it is, an' I'm tellin' ye 
now. D 'ye waant me t 'lock ye up ? Is that what ye 're looking 
fer? There's a lot av good iron cells back there waitin' fer 
ye if ye caan't behave yerself. What 're ye goin' t'do 
about it?" 

Possibly the one in error would relent a little and begin 
arguing with the parent, charging unfairness, cruelty and the 
like. 

"Here now, don't ye be taalkin' to yer mother like that! 
Ye 're not old enough to be doin' that. An' what's more, don't 
let me ketch ye out on the streets er her complainin' to me 
again. If ye do I'll send one av me men around to bring 
ye in. This is the last now. D'ye waant to spend a few 
nights in a cell? Well, then! Now be gettin' out av here 
an' don't let me hear any more about ye. Not a word. I've 
had enough now. Out with ye!" 

And he would glower and grow red and pop-eyed and fairly 
roar, shoving them tempestuously out — only, after the victim 
had gone, he would lean back in his chair and wipe his fore- 
head and sigh: " 'Tis tough, the bringin' up av childern, 
hereabouts especially. Ye can 't be blamin ' them fer waantin ' 
to be out on the streets, an' yet ye can't let 'em out aither, 
exactly. It's hard to tell what to do with 'em. I've been 
taalkin' like that fer years now to one an' another. 'Tis 
all the good it does. Ye can 't do much fer 'em hereabouts. ' ' 

It was during this period, this summer time and fall, that 
I came in contact with some of the most interesting charac- 
ters, newspaper men especially, flotsam and jetsam who 
drifted in here from other newspaper centers and then drifted 
out again, newspaper men so intelligent and definite in some 
respects that they seemed worthy of any position or station 
in life and yet so indifferent and errant or so poorly placed 
in spite of their efforts and capacities as to cause me to 
despair for the reward of merit anywhere — intellectual merit, 
I mean. For some of these men while fascinating were the 
rankest kind of failures, drunkards, drug fiends, hypochon- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 223 

driacs. Many of them had stayed too long in the profession, 
which is a young man's game at best, and others had wasted 
their opportunities dreaming of a chance fortune no doubt and 
then had taken to drink or drugs. Still others, young men 
like myself, drifters and uncertain as to their future, were 
just finding out how unprofitable the newspaper game was 
and in consequence were cynical, waspish and moody. 

I am not familiar with many professions and so cannot say 
whether any of the others abound in this same wealth of 
eccentric capacity and understanding, or offer as little re- 
ward. Certainly all the newspaper offices I have ever known 
sparkled with these exceptional men, few of whom ever 
seemed to do very well, and no paper I ever worked on paid 
wages anywhere near equal to the services rendered or the 
hours exacted. It was always a hard, driving game, with the 
ash-heap as the reward for the least weakening of energy or 
ability; and at the same time these newspapers were con- 
stantly spouting editorially about kindness, justice, charity, a 
full reward for labor, and were getting up fresh-air funds and 
so on for those not half as deserving as their employees, but 
— and this is the point — likely to bring them increased cir- 
culation. In the short while I was in the newspaper profes- 
sion I met many men who seemed to be thoroughly sound 
intellectually, quite free, for the most part, from the nar- 
row, cramping conventions of their day, and yet they never 
seemed to get on very well. 

I remember one man in particular, Clark I think his name 
was, who arrived on the scene just about this time and who 
fascinated me. He was so able and sure of touch mentally 
and from an editorial point of view, and yet financially and 
in every material way he was such a failure. He came from 
Kansas City or Omaha while I was on the Republic and had 
worked in many, many places before that. He was a stocky, 
dark, clerkly figure, with something of the manager or owner 
or leader about him, a most shrewd and capable-looking per- 
son. And when he first came to the Republic he seemed des- 
tined to rise rapidly and never to want for anything, so much 
self-control and force did he appear to have. He was a hard 



224 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

worker, quiet, unostentatious, and once I had gained lis con- 
fidence, he gradually revealed a tale of past position and 
comfort which, verified as it was by Wandell and "Williams, 
was startling when contrasted with his present position. Al- 
though he was not much over forty he had been editor or 
managing editor of several important papers in the West 
but had lost them through some primary disaster which had 
caused him to take to drink — his wife's unfaithfulness, I 
believe — and his inability in recent years to stay sober for 
more than three months at a stretch. In some other city he 
had been an important factor in politics. Here he was, still 
clean and spruce apparently (when I first saw him, at any 
rate), going about his work with a great deal of energy, 
writing the most satisfactory newspaper stories; and then, 
once two or three months of such labor had gone by, disap- 
pearing. When I inquired of Williams and Wandell as 
to his whereabouts the former stared at me with his one 
eye and smiled, then lifted his fingers in the shape of a 
glass to his mouth. Wandell merely remarked: "Drink, I 
think. He may show up and he may not. He had a few 
weeks' wages when he left." 

I did not hear anything more of him for some weeks, when 
suddenly one day, in that wretched section of St. Louis be- 
loved of Dick and Peter as a source of literary material, I 
was halted by a figure which I assumed to be one of the 
lowest of the low. A short, matted, dirty black beard con- 
cealed a face that bore no resemblance to Clark. A hat that 
looked as though it might have been lifted out of an ash-barrel 
was pulled slouchily and defiantly over long uncombed black 
hair. His face was filthy, as were his clothes and shoes, 
slimy even. An old brown coat (how come by, I wonder?) 
was marked by a greenish slime across the back and shoulders, 
slime that could only have come from a gutter. 

"Don't you know me, Dreiser?" he queried in a deep, 
rasping voice, a voice so rusty that it sounded as though it 
had not been used for years " — Clark, Clark of the Republic. 

You know me " and then when I stared in amazement he 

added shrewdly: "I've been sick and in a hospital. You 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 225 

haven't a dollar about you, have you? I have to rest a little 
and get myself in shape again before I can go to work." 

"Well, of all things!" I exclaimed in amazement, and 
then: "I'll be damned!" I could not help laughing: he 
looked so queer, impossible almost. A stage tramp could 
scarcely have done better. I gave him the dollar. "What 
in the world are you doing — drinking?" and then, overawed 
by the memory of his past efficiency and force "I could not go 
on. It was too astonishing. 

"Yes, I've been drinking," he admitted, a little defiantly, 
I thought, "but I've been sick too, just getting out now. I 
got pneumonia there in the summer and couldn't work. I'll 
be all right after a while. What's news at the Republic?" 

"Nothing." 

He mumbled something about having played in bad luck, 
that he would soon be all right again, then ambled up the 
wretched rickety street and disappeared. 

I bustled out of that vicinity as fast as I could. I was so 
startled and upset by this that I hurried back to the lobby 
of the Southern Hotel (my favorite cure for all despondent 
days), where all was brisk, comfortable, gay. Here I purchased 
a newspaper and sat down in a rocking-chair. Here at least 
was no sign of poverty or want. In order to be rid of that 
sense of failure and degradation which had crept over me I 
took a drink or two myself. That any one as capable as 
Clark could fall so low in so short a time was quite beyond 
me. The still strongly puritan and moralistic streak in me 
was shocked beyond measure, and for days I could do little 
but contrast the figure of the man I had seen about the 
Republic office with that I had met in that street of degraded 
gin-mills and tumbledown tenements. Could people really 
vary so greatly and in so short a time? What must be the 
nature of their minds if they could do that? Was mine 
like that? Would it become so? For days thereafter I was 
wandering about in spirit with this man from gin-mill to gin- 
mill and lodging-house to lodging-house, seeing him drink at 
scummy bars and lying down at night on a straw pallet in 
some wretched hole. 



226 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

And then there was Rodenberger, strange, amazing Roden- 
berger, poet, editorial writer and what not, who when I first 
met him had a little weekly editorial paper for which he 
raised the money somehow (I have forgotten its name) and 
in .which he poured forth his views on life and art and nature 
in no uncertain terms. How he could write! (He was con- 
nected with some drug company, by birth or marriage, which 
may have helped to sustain him. I never knew anything defi- 
nite concerning his private life.) As I view him now, Roden- 
berger was a man in whom imagination and logic existed in 
such a confusing, contesting way as to augur fatalism and 
(from a worldly or material point of view) failure. He was 
constantly varying between a state of extreme sobriety and 
vigorous mental energy, and debauches which lasted for weeks 
and which included drink, houses of prostitution, morphine, 
and I know not what else. 

One sunny summer morning in July or August, I found 
him standing at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut outside 
the LaClede drugstore quite stupefied with drink or some- 
thing. 

"Hello, Rody," I called when I saw him. "What's ailing 
you ? You 're not drunk again, are you ? ' ' 

"Drunk," he replied with a slight sardonic motion of the 
hand and an equally faint curl of the lip, ' ' and what 's more, 
I'm glad of it. I don't have to think about myself, or St. 
Louis, or you, when I'm drunk. And what's more," and here 
he interjected another slight motion of the hand and hic- 
coughed, "I'm taking dope, and I'm glad of that. I got all 
the dope I want now, right here in my little old vest pocket, 
and I'm going to take all I want of it," and he tapped the 
pocket significantly. Then, in a boasting, contentious spirit, 
he drew forth a white pillbox and slowly opened it and re- 
vealed to my somewhat astonished gaze some thirty or forty 
small while pills, two or three of which he proceeded to lift 
toward his mouth. 

In my astonishment and sympathy and horror I decided to 
save him if I could, so I struck his hand a smart blow, knock- 
ing the pills all over the sidewalk. "Without a word of com- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 227 

plaint save a feeble "Zat so?" he dropped to his hands and 
knees and began crawling here and there after them as fast 
as he could, picking them up and putting them in his mouth, 
while I, equally determined, began jumping here and there 
and crushing them under my heels. 

' ' Rody, for God 's sake ! Aren 't you ashamed of yourself ? 
Get up!" 

"I'll show you!" he cried determinedly if somewhat reck- 
lessly. " I '11 eat 'em all ! 1 11 eat 'em all ! G D you ! " 

and he swallowed all that he had thus far been able to 
collect. 

I saw him dead before me in no time at all, or thought I 
did. 

"Here, Johnson," I called to another of our friends who 
•came up just then, "help me with Rody, will you? He's 
drunk, and he's got a box of morphine pills and he's trying 
to take them. I knocked them out of his hand and now he's 
eaten a lot of them. ' ' 

' ' Here, Rody, ' ' he said, pulling him to his feet and holding 
him against the wall, ' ' stop this ! "What the hell 's the matter 
with you ? ' ' and then he turned to me : " Maybe they 're not 
morphine. Why don't you ask the druggist? If they are 
we'd better be getting him to the hospital." 

"They're morphine all right," gurgled the victim. "Dont- 
cha worry — I know morphine all right, and I'll eat 'em all," 
and he began struggling with Johnson. 

At the latter 's suggestion I hurried into the drugstore, the 
proprietor and clerk of which were friends to all of us, and 
inquired. They assured me that they were morphine and 
when I told them that Rodenberger had swallowed about a 
dozen they insisted that we bring him in and then call an 
ambulance, while they prepared an emetic of some kind. 
It happened that the head physician of the St. Louis City 
Hospital, Dr. Heinie Marks, was also a friend of all news- 
paper men (what free advertising we used to give him!), 
and to him I now turned for aid, calling him on the telephone. 

' ' Bring him out ! Bring him out ! " he said. Then : ' ' Wait ; 
I'll send the wagon." 



228 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

By this time Johnson, with the aid of the clerk and the 
druggist, had brought Kodenberger inside and caused him to 
drink a quantity of something, whereupon we gazed upon 
him for signs of his approaching demise. By now he was 
very pale and limp and seemed momentarily to grow more 
so. To our intense relief, however, the city ambulance soon 
came and a smart young interne in white took charge. Then 
we saw Rodenberger hauled away, to be pumped out later and 
detained for days. I was told afterward by the doctor that 
he had taken enough of the pills to end him had he not been 
thoroughly pumped out and treated. Yet within a week 
or so he was once more up and around, fate, in the shape of 
myself and Johnson, having intervened. And many a time 
thereafter he turned up at this selfsame corner as sound and 
smiling as ever. 

Once, when I ventured to reproach him for this and other 
follies, he merely said: 

"All in the day's wash, my boy, all in the day's wash. If 
I was so determined to go you should have let me alone. 
Heaven only knows what trouble you have stored up for me 
now by keeping me here when I wanted to go. That may 
have been a divine call! But — Kismet! Allah is Allah! 
Let's go and have a drink!" And we adjourned to Phil 
Hackett's bar, where we were soon surrounded by fellow- 
bibbers who spent most of their time looking out through 
the cool green lattices of that rest room upon the hot street 
outside. 

I may add that Rodenberger 's end was not such as might 
be expected by the moralists. Ten years later he had com- 
pletely reformed his habits and entered the railroad business, 
having attained to a considerable position in one of the 
principal roads running out of St. Louis. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

Fob years past during the summer months the Republic had 
been conducting a summer charity of some kind, a fresh-air 
fund, in support of which it attempted every summer to 
invent and foster some quick money-raising scheme. This 
year it had taken the form of that musty old chestnut, a base- 
ball game, to be played between two local fraternities, the 
fattest men of one called the Owls and the leanest of another 
known as the Elks. The hope of the Republic was to work up 
interest in this startling novelty by a humorous handling of 
it so as to draw a large crowd to the baseball grounds. Before 
I had even heard of it this task had been assigned to two or 
three others, a new man each day, in the hope of extracting 
fresh bits of humor, but so far with but indifferent results. 

One day, then, I was handed a clipping concerning this 
proposed game that had been written the preceding day by 
another member of the staff and which was headed " Blood 
on the Moon. ' ' It purported to narrate the preliminary mut- 
terings and grumblings of those who were to take part in the 
contest. It was not so much an amusing picture as a news 
item, and I did not think very much of it; but since I had 
been warned by Williams that I was about to be called upon 
to produce the next day's burst, and that it must be humor- 
ous, I was by no means inclined to judge it too harshly. . . . 
The efforts of one's predecessor always appear more forceful 
as one's own threaten to prove inadequate. A little later 
Wandell proceeded to outline to me most of the conditions 
which surrounded this contest. "See if you can't get some 
fun into it. You must do it. Some one has to. I depend on 
you for this. Make us laugh," and he smiled a dry, almost 
frosty smile. "Laugh!" I thought. "Good Lord, how am I 
to make anybody laugh? I never wrote anything funny in 
my life!" 

229 



230 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Nevertheless, being put to it for this afternoon (he had 
given me no other assignment, fancying no doubt that I might 
have a hard time with this), and being the soul of duty, I 
went to my desk to think it over. Not an idea came to me. It 
seemed to me that nothing could be duller than this, a baseball 
game between fat and lean men; yet if I didn't write some- 
thing it would be a black mark against me and if I did and 
it proved a piece of trash I should sink equally low in the 
estimation of my superior. I took my pencil and began scrib- 
bling a possible introduction, wondering how one achieved 
humor when one had it not. After writing aimlessly for a 
half -hour or so I finally re-examined the texts of my pred- 
ecessors of previous days and then sought to take the same 
tack. Only, instead of describing the aspirations and opposi- 
tions of the two rival organizations in general terms, I 
assumed a specific interest and plotting on the part of certain 
of their chief officers, who even now, as I proceeded to assert 
and with names and places given in different parts of the 
city, were spending days and nights devising ways and means 
of outwitting the enemy. Thoughts of rubber baseball bats, 
baskets and nets in which flies might be caught, secret electric 
wiring under the diamond between the bases to put "pep" 
into the fat runners, seemed to have some faint trace of humor 
in them, and these I now introduced as being feverishly 
worked out in various secret places in order that the great 
game might not be lost. As I wrote, building up purely imag- 
inary characteristics for each one involved (I did not know 
any of them), I myself began to grow interested and amused. 
It all seemed so ridiculous, such trash, and yet the worse I 
made it the better it seemed. At last I finished it, but upon 
re-reading it I was disturbed by the coarse horse-play of it all. 
"This will never get by," I thought. "Wandell will think 
it's rotten." But having by now come to a rather friendly 
understanding with "Williams, I decided to take it over and 
ask him so that in case I had failed I might try again. 

Wearily he eyed me with his one eye, for already he had 
been editing this for days, then leaned back in his chair and 
began to read it over. At first he did not seem to be much 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 231 

interested, but after the first paragraph, which he examined 
with a blank expression, he smiled and finally chortled: 
"This is pretty good, yes. You needn't worry about it; I 
think it '11 do. Leave it with me. ' ' Then he began to edit it. 
Later in the afternoon when Wandell had come in to give out 
the evening assignments I saw Williams gather it up and go 
in to him. After a time he came out smiling, and in a little 
while "Wandell called me in. 

"Not bad, not bad," he said, tapping the manuscript 
lightly. "You've got the right idea, I think. I'll let you do 
that for a while afternoons until we get up on it. You needn 't 
do anything else — just that, if you do it well enough." 

I was pleased, for judging by the time it had taken to do 
this (not more than two hours) I should have most of my 
afternoons to myself. I saw visions of a late breakfast, idling 
in my room, walks after I had done with my work and before 
I returned to the office. Curiously enough, this trivial thing, 
undertaken at first in great doubt and with no sense of ability 
and with no real equipment for it, nevertheless proved for 
me the most fortunate thing I had thus far done. It was not 
so much that it was brilliant, or even especially well done, as 
that what I did fell in with the idle summer mood of the city 
or with the contesting organizations and the readers of the 
Republic. Congratulatory letters began to arrive. Pleased 
individuals whose names had been humorously mentioned 
began to call up the city editor, or the managing editor, or 
even the editor-in-chief, and voice their approval. In a trice 
and almost before I knew it, I was a personage, especially in 
newspaper circles. 

' ' We 've got the stuff now, all right, ' ' Wandell cackled most 
violently one evening, at the same time slapping me genially 
on the shoulder. "This '11 do it, I'm sure. A few weeks, and 
we'll get a big crowd and a lot of publicity. Just you stick 
to the way you're doing this now. Don't change your style. 
We've got 'em coming now." 

I was really amazed. 

And to add to it, Wandell 's manner toward me changed. 
Hitherto, despite his but poorly concealed efforts, he had been 



232 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

distant, brusque, dictatorial, superior. Now of a sudden he 
was softer, more confidential. 

"I have a friend up the street here — Frank Hewe, an 
awfully nice fellow. He's the second assistant of this or that 
or the other such company. In one of these comic blurbs of 
yours don't you think you could ring him in in some way? 
He's an Elk and I'm sure the mention would tickle him to 
death." 

I saw the point of Mr. Wandell's good nature. He was 
handing round some favors on his own account. 

But since it was easy for me to do it and could not injure 
the text in any way, and seemed to popularize the paper and 
myself immensely, I was glad to do it. Each evening, when 
at six or seven I chose to amble in, having spent the afternoon 
at my room or elsewhere idling, my text all done in an hour 
as a rule, my small chief would beam on me most cordially. 

""Whatcha got there? Another rib-tickler? Let's see. 
Well, go get your dinner, and if you don 't want to come back 
go and see a show. There 's not much doing tonight anyhow, 
and I'd like to keep you fresh. Don't stay up too late, and 
turn me in another good one tomorrow." 

So it went. 

In a trice and as if by magic I was lifted into an entirely 
different realm. The ease of those hours! Citizens of local 
distinction wanted to meet me. I was asked by Wandell one 
afternoon to come to the Southern bar in order that Colonel 
So-and-So, the head of this, that or the other thing, as well as 
some others, might meet me. I was told that this, that and 
the other person here thought I must be clever, a fool, or a 
genius. I was invited to a midnight smoker at some country 
club. The local newspaper men who gathered at the LaClede 
daily all knew, and finding me in high favor with Phil 
Hackett, the lessee of the hotel bar whose name I had men- 
tioned once, now laughed with me and drank at my expense — 
or rather at that of the proprietor, for I was grandly told by 
him that I "could pay for no drinks there," which kept me 
often from going there at all. As the days went on I was 
assured that owing to my efforts the game was certain to be 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 233 

a big success, that it was the most successful stunt the Repub- 
lic had ever pulled and that it would net the fund several 
thousand dollars. 

For four or five weeks then it seemed to me as though I were 
walking on air. Life was so different, so pleasant these hot, 
bright days, with everybody pleased with me and my name as 
a clever man — a humorist! — being bandied about. Some of 
my new admirers were so pleased with me that they asked me 
to come to their homes to see them. I was becoming a person- 
age. Hackett of the LaClede having asked me casually one 
day where I lived, I was surprised that night in my room by a 
large wicker hamper containing champagne, whiskey and 
cordials. I transferred it to the office of the Republic for the 
reportorial staff, with my compliments. 

My handling of the fat-lean baseball game having estab- 
lished me as a feature writer of some ability, the Republic 
decided to give me another feature assignment. There had 
been in progress a voting contest which embraced the whole 
State and which was to decide which of many hundreds of 
school-teachers, the favorites out of how many districts in the 
State I cannot now recall, were to be sent to Chicago to see 
the "World's Fair for two or more weeks at the Republic's 
expense. In addition, a reporter or traveling correspondent 
was to be sent with the party to report its daily doings and 
that reporter's comments were to be made a daily news 
feature ; and that reporter was to be myself. I was not seek- 
ing it, had not even heard of it, but according to Wandell, 
who was selecting the man for the management, I was the one 
most likely to give a satisfactory picture of the life at the 
great Fair as well as render the Republic a service in pictur- 
ing the doings of these teachers. An agent of the business 
manager was also going along to look after the practical 
details, and also the city superintendent of schools. I wel- 
comed this opportunity to see the World's Fair, which was 
then in its heyday and filling the newspapers. 

"I don't mind telling you," "Wandell observed to me a few 
days before the final account of the baseball game was to be 
written, "that your work on this ball game has been good. 



234 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Everybody is pleased. Now, there's a little excursion we're 
going to send up to Chicago, and I 'm going to send you along 

on that for a rest. Mr. , our business manager, will tell 

you all about it. You see him about transportation and ex- 
penses." 

"When am I to go?" I asked. 

1 ' Thursday. Thursday night. ' ' 

' ' Then I don 't have to see the ball game ? ' ' 

"Oh, that's all right. You've done the important part of 
that. Let some one else write it up." 

I smiled at the compliment. I went downstairs and had 
somebody explain to me what it was the paper was going to 
do and congratulated myself. Now I was to have a chance to 
visit the World's Fair, which had not yet opened when I left 
Chicago. I could look up my father, whom I had neglected 
since my mother's death, as well as such other members of 
the family as were still living in Chicago ; but, most important, 
I could go around to the Globe there and "blow" to my old 
confreres about my present success. All I had to do was to 
go along and observe what the girls did and how they enjoyed 
themselves and then write it up. 

I went up the street humming and rejoicing, and finally 
landed in the "art department" of my friends. 

"I'm being sent to Chicago to the World's Fair," I said 
gleefully. 

"Bully for you," was the unanimous return. "Let's hope 
you have a good time." 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

As the time drew near, though, the thought of being a sort 
of literary chaperon to a lot of school-teachers, probably 
all of them homely and uninteresting, was not as cheering 
as it might have been. I wondered how I should manage to 
be civil and interesting to so many, how I was to extract news 
out of them. Yet the attitude of the business manager and the 
managing editor, as well as the editor-in-chief or publisher, 
Mr. Knapp, to whom I was now introduced by my city edi- 
tor, was enough to convince me that whatever I thought of 
it I was plainly rising in their esteem. Although no word was 
said about any increase in pay, which I still consider the limit 
of beggarly, pennywise policy, these magnificoes were most 
cordial, smiled and congratulated me on my work and then 
turned me over to the man who had the financing of the trip 
in charge. He reminded me a good deal of a banker or 
church elder, small, dark, full-whiskered, solemn, affable, and 
assured me that he was glad that I had been appointed, that 
I was the ideal man for the place, and that he would see to 
it that anything I needed to make my trip pleasant would be 
provided. I could scarcely believe that I was so important. 

After asking me to go and see the superintendent of schools, 
also of the party as guest of the Republic, he said he would 
send to me a Mr. Dean, who would be his agent en route 
to look after everything — baggage, fares, hotels, meals. The 
latter came and at once threw a wet blanket over me : he was 
so utterly dull and commonplace. His clothes, his shoes, his 
loud tie and his muddy, commonplace intellect all irritated me 
beyond measure. Something he said — "Now, of course, we 
all want to do everything we can to please these ladies and 
make them happy ' ' — irritated me. The usual pastoral, super- 
visory stuff, I thought, and I at once decided that I did not 
want him to bother me in any way. "What! Did this 

235 



236 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

horrible bounder assume that he was regulating my conduct 
on this trip, or that I was going out of my way to accom- 
modate myself to him and his theory of how the trip should 
be conducted, or to accept him as a social equal? 'We 
must' indeed! — I, Theodore Dreiser, the well-known news- 
paper writer of St. Louis ! The effrontery ! "Well, he would 
get scant attention from me, and the more he let me alone 
the better it would be for him and all of us!" 

And now "Wandell also began to irritate me by attempting 
to give me minute instructions as to just what was wanted and 
how I was to write it, although, as I understood it, I was now 
working for the managing editor who was to have the material 
edited in the telegraph department. Besides, I thought that 
I was now entitled to a little leeway and discretion in the 
choice of what I should report. The idea of making it all 
advertising for the Republic and myself a literary wet-nurse 
to a school party was a little too much. 

However, I bustled down to the train that was waiting to 
carry this party of damsels to Chicago and the "World's Fair, 
a solid Pullman train which left St. Louis at dusk and ar- 
rived in Chicago early the next morning. The fifth of the 
Pullmans was reserved to carry the school-teachers and their 
chaperons, Mr. Soldan, superintendent of schools, Mr. Dean, 
the business-manager-representative, and myself. I entered 
the car wondering of course what the result of such a tem- 
porary companionship with so many girls might be. They 
were all popular, hence beautiful, prize-winners, as I had 
heard; but my pessimistic mind had registered a somewhat 
depressing conception of the ordinary school-mistress and I 
did not expect much. 

For once in my life I was agreeably disappointed. These 
were young, buxom Missouri school-teachers and as attrac- 
tive as that profession will permit. I was no sooner seated 
in a gaudy car than one of the end doors opened and there 
was ushered in by the porter a pretty, rosy-cheeked, black- 
haired girl of perhaps twenty-four. This was a good begin- 
ning. Immediately thereafter there came in a tall, fair girl 
with light brown hair and blue eyes. Others now entered, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 237 

blondes and brunettes, stout and slender, with various inter- 
mediate grades or types. Instead of a mounting contempt I 
suddenly began to suffer from a sickening sense of inability 
to hold my own in the face of so many pretty girls. 
What could I do with twenty girls? How write about 
them? Maybe the business-manager-representative or the 
superintendent would not come on this train and I should 
be left to introduce these girls to each other! God! 
I should have to find out their names, and I had not thought 
to inquire at the office! 

Fortunately for my peace of mind a large, rather showily 
dressed man with big soft ruddy hands decorated with several 
rings and a full oval face tinted with health, now entered by 
the front door and beamed cheerfully upon all. 

"Ah, here we are now," he began with the impressive air 
of one in authority, going up to the first maiden he saw. ' ' I 

see you have arrived safely, Miss — ah — C . I'm glad to 

see you again. How are you?" We went on to another: 

"And here is Miss W ! Well, I am glad. I read in the 

BepvMic that you had won." 

I realized that this was the Professor Soldan so earnestly 
recommended to me, the superintendent of schools and one 
upon whom I was to comment. I rather liked him. 

An engine went puffing and clanging by on a neighboring 
track. I gazed out of the window. It seemed essential for 
me to begin doing something but I did not know how to begin. 
Suddenly the large jeweled hand was laid on my shoulder and 
the professor stood over me. "This must be Mr. Dreiser, of 

the Republic. Your business manager, Mr. , phoned 

me this morning that you were coming. You must let me 
introduce you to all these young ladies. We want to get the 
formalities over and be on easy terms." 

I bowed heavily for I felt as though I were turning to stone. 
The prettiness and sparkle of these girls all chatting and 
laughing had fairly done for me. I followed the professor as 
one marches to the gallows and he began at one end of the 
car and introduced me to one girl after another as though it 
were a state affair of some kind. I felt like a boob. I was 



238 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

flustered and yet delighted by his geniality and the fact that 
he was helping me over a very ticklish situation. I envied him 
his ease and self-possession. He soon betook himself else- 
where, leaving me to converse as best I might with a pretty 
black-haired Irish girl whose eyes made me wish to be agree- 
able. And now, idiot, I struggled desperately for bright 
things to say. How did one entertain a pretty girl, anyhow? 
The girl came to my rescue by commenting on the nature of 
the contest and the difficulties she had had. She hadn't 
thought she would win at all. Some others joined in, and 
before I knew it the train was out of the station and on its 
way. The porter was closing the windows for the long tunnel, 
the girls were sinking into comfortable attitudes, and there 
was a general air of relaxation and good nature. Before East 
St. Louis was reached a general conversation was in progress, 
and by the time the train was a half -hour out a party of 
familiars had gathered in the little bridal chamber, which 
was at the rear of the car, laughing and gesticulating. But 
I was not of it, nor was the girl with whom I was chatting. 

"Why don't you come back here, Myra?" called a voice. 

"Having lots of fun up there?" called another. 

"Do come back, for goodness' sake! Don't try to mo- 
nopolize one whole man. ' ' 

I felt my legs going from under me. Could this be true? 
Must I now go back there and try to face six or seven? 
Stumblingly I followed Myra, and at the door stopped and 
looked in. It was full of pretty girls, my partner of the 
moment before now chattering lightly among them. "I'm 
gone," I thought. "It's all off. Now for the grand collapse 
and silence ! "Which way shall I turn ? To whom ? ' ' 

"There's room for one more here," said a Juney blonde, 
making a place for me. 

I could not refuse this challenge. "I'm the one," I said 
weakly, and sank heavily beside her. She looked at me en- 
couragingly, as did the others, and at a vast expense of energy 
and will power I managed to achieve a smile. It was pathetic. 

"Isn't train-riding just glorious?" exclaimed one of these 
bright-faced imps exuberantly. "I bet I haven't been on a 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 239 

train twice before in all my life, and just look at me ! I do it 
all right, don't I? I'd just love to travel. I wish I could 
travel all the time." 

"Oh, don't you, though!" echoed the girl who was sitting 
beside me and whom up to now I had scarcely noticed. "Do 
you think she looks so nice riding ? ' ' 

I cannot recall what I answered. It may have been witty — 
if so it was an accident. 

"What do you call the proper surroundings?" put in a 
new voice in answer to something that was said, which same 
drew my attention to limpid blue eyes, a Cupid's bow mouth 
and a wealth of corn-colored hair. 

"These," I finally achieved gallantly, gazing about the 
compartment and at my companions. A burst of applause 
followed. I was coming to. Yet I was still bewildered by the 
bouquet of faces about me. Already the idea of the dreary 
school-teachers had been dissipated : these were prize-winners. 
Look where I would I seemed to see a new type of prettiness 
confronting me. It was like being in the toils of those nymphs 
in the Ring of the Nibelungen, yet I had no desire to escape, 
wishing to stay now and see how I could "make out" as a 
Lothario. Indeed at this I worked hard. I did my best to 
gaze gayly and captivatingly into pretty eyes of various colors. 
They all gazed amusedly back. I was almost the only man; 
they were out for a lark. What would you? 

"If I had my wishes now I'd wish for just one thing," 
I volunteered, expecting to arouse curiosity. 

"Which one?" asked the girl with the brown eyes and 
piquant little face who wished to travel forever. Her look 
was significant. 

"This one," I said, running my finger around in a circle 
to include them all and yet stopping at none. 

"We're not won yet, though," said the girl smirkily. 

"Couldn't you be?" I asked smartly. 

' ' Not all at once, anyhow. Could we ? " she asked, speaking 
for the crowd. 

I found myself poor at repartee. ' ' It will seem all at once, 
though, when it happens, won't it?" I finally managed to 



240 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

return. "Isn't it always 'so sudden'?" I was surprising 
myself. 

' ' Aren 't you smart ! ' ' said the blue-eyed girl beside me. 

"Oh, that's clever, isn't it?" said the girl with the corn- 
colored hair. 

I gazed in her direction. Beside her sat a maiden whom I 
had but dimly noticed. She was in white, with a mass of 
sunny red hair. Her eyes were almond-shaped, liquid and 
blue-gray. Her nose was straight and fine, her lips sweetly 
curved. She seemed bashful and retiring. At her bosom was 
a bouquet of pink roses, but one had come loose. 

' ' Oh, your flowers ! " I exclaimed. 

"Let me give you one," she replied, laughing. I had not 
heard her voice before and I liked it. 

"Certainly," I said. Then to the others: "You see, I'll 
take anything I can get." She drew a rose from her bosom 
and held it out toward me. ' ' Won 't you put it on ? " I asked 
smartly. 

She leaned over and began to fasten it. She worked a 
moment and then looked at me, making, as I thought, a sheep 's 
eye at me. 

"You may have my place," said the girl next me, feigning 
to help her, and she took it. 

The conversation waxed even freer after this, although for 
me I felt that it had now taken a definite turn. . . .1 
was talking for her benefit. We were still in the midst of this 
when the conductor passed through and after him Mr. Dean, 
middle-aged, dusty, assured, advisory. 

"These are the people," he said. "They are all in one 
party." He called me aside and we sat down, he explaining 
cheerfully and volubly the trouble he was having keeping 
everything in order. I could have murdered him. 

"I'm looking out for the baggage and the hotel bills and 
all," he insisted. "In the morning we'll be met by a tally-ho 
and ride out to the hotel." 

I was thinking of my splendid bevy of girls and the delight- 
ful time I had been having. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 241 

"Well, that'll be fine, won't it?" I said wearily. "Is 
that all?" 

' ' Oh, we have it all planned ont, ' ' he went on. " It 's going 
to be a fine trip." 

I did my best to show that I had no desire to talk, but 
still he kept on. He wanted to meet the teachers and I had 
to introduce him. Fortunately he became interested in one 
small group and I sidled away — only to find my original 
group considerably reduced. Some had gone to the dress- 
ingroom, others were arranging their parcels about their 
unmade berths. The porter came in and began to make them 
up. I looked ruefully about me. 

"Well, our little group has broken up," I said at last to 
the girl of my choice as I came up to where she was sitting. 

' ' Yes. It 's getting late. But I 'm not sleepy yet. ' ' 

We dropped into an easy conversation, and I learned that 
she was from Missouri and taught in a little town not far 
from St. Louis. She explained to me how she had come to win, 
and I told her how ignorant I had been of the whole affair 
up to four days ago. She said that friends had bought hun- 
dreds of Republics in order to get the coupons. It seemed a 
fine thing to me for a girl to be so popular. 

"You've never been to Chicago, then?" I asked. 

"Oh no. I've never been anywhere really. I'm just a 
simple country girl, you know. I've always wanted to go, 
though." 

She fascinated me. She seemed so direct, truthful, sympa- 
thetic. 

"You'll enjoy it," I said. "It's worth seeing. I was in 
Chicago when the Fair was being built. My home is there." 

"Then you'll stay with your home-folks, won't you?" she 
asked, using a word for family to which I was not accustomed. 
It touched a chord of sympathy. I was not very much in 
touch with my family any more but the way she seemed to look 
on hers made me wish that I were. 

"Well, not exactly. They live over on the west side. I'll 
go to see them, though." 

I was thinking that now I had her out of that sparkling 



242 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

group she seemed more agreeable than before, much more 
interesting, more subdued and homelike. 

She arose to leave me. "I want to get some of my things 
before the porter puts them away, ' ' she explained. 

I stepped out of her way. She tripped up the aisle and 
I looked after her, fascinated. Of a sudden she seemed quite 
the most interesting of all those here, simple, pretty, vigorous 
and with a kind of tact and grace that was impressive. Also 
I felt an intense something about her that was concealed by 
an air of supreme innocence and maidenly reserve. I went 
out to the smokingroom, where I sat alone looking out of the 
window. 

''"What a delightful girl," I thought, with a feeling of in- 
tense satisfaction. "And I have the certainty of seeing her 
again in the morning ! ' ' 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

The next morning I was awake early, stirred by the thoughts 

of Chicago, the Fair, Miss W (my favorite), as well as 

the group of attractive creatures who now formed a sort of 
background for her. One of the characteristics of my very 
youthful temperament at that time was the power to invest 
every place I had ever left with a romance and strangeness 
such as might have attached to something abandoned, say, 
a thousand or two years before and which I was now revisiting 
for the first time to find it nearly all done over. So it was 
now in my attitude toward Chicago. I had been away for only 
eight or nine months, and still I expected — what did I not ex- 
pect? — the whole skyline and landscape to be done over, or 
all that I had known done away with. Going into Chicago 
I studied every street and crossing and house and car. How 
sad to think I had ever had to leave it, to leave Alice, my 
home, my father, all my relatives and old friends! Where 
was B , A , T , my father ? At thought of the lat- 
ter I was deeply moved, for had I not left him about a year 
before and without very much ceremony at the time I had 

chosen to follow the fortunes of my sister C ? Now that 

I looked back on it all from the vantage point of a year 's work 
I was much chastened and began to think how snippy and 
unkind I had been. Poor, tottering, broken soul, I thought. 
I could see him then as he really was, a warm, generous and 
yet bigoted and ignorant soul, led captive in his childhood 
to a brainless theory and having no power within himself to 
break that chain, and now wandering distrait and forlorn 
amid a storm of difficulties: age, the death of his wife, the 
flight of his children, doubt as to their salvation, poverty, a 
declining health. 

I can see him now, a thin grasshopper of a man, brooding 
wearily with those black-brown Teutonic eyes of his, as sad 

243 



244 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

as failure itself. What thoughts! What moods! He was 
very much like one of those old men whom Rembrandt has 
portrayed, wrinkled, sallow, leathery. My father's peculiarly 
German hair and beard were always carefully combed and 
brushed, the hair back over his forehead like Nietzsche's, the 
beard resting reddishly on his chest. His clothes were always 
loose and ill-fitting, being bought for durability, not style, or 
made over from abandoned clothes of some one — my brother 

Paul or my sister M 's husband. He always wore an old 

and very carefully preserved black derby hat, very wide of 
brim and out of style, which he pulled low over his deep-set 
weary eyes. I always wondered where and when he had 
bought it. On this trip I offered to buy him a new one, but 
he preferred to use the money for a mass for the repose of 
my good mother's soul! Under his arm or in one of his 
capacious pockets was always a Catholic prayerbook from 
which he read prayers as familiar to him as his own hands, 
yet from the mumbling repetition of which he extracted some 
comfort, as does the Hindu from meditating upon space or 
time. In health he was always fluttering to one or another 
of a score of favorite Catholic churches, each as commonplace 
as the other, and there, before some trashy plaster image of 
some saint or virgin as dead or helpless as his own past, mak- 
ing supplication for what? — peace in death, the reconversion 
and right conduct of his children, the salvation of his own 
and my mother's soul? Debts were his great misery, as I 
had always known. If one died and left unpaid an old bill 
of some kind one had to stay in purgatory so much longer ! 

Riding into Chicago this morning I speculated as to the 
thinness of his hands as I had known them, the tremulousness 
of his inquiries, the appeal in his sad resigned eyes, whence 
all power to compel or convince had long since gone. In the 
vast cosmic flight of force, flowing from what heart we know 
not but in which as little corks our suns and planets float, 
it is possible that there may be some care, an equation, a bal- 
ancing of the scales of suffering and pleasure. I hope so. If 
not I know not the reason for tears or those emotions with 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 245 

which so many of us salve the memory of seemingly im- 
medicable ills. If immedicable, why cry? 

I sought Miss W , who was up before me and sitting 

beside her section window. I was about to go and talk with 
her when my attention was claimed by other girls. This 
bevy could not very well afford to see the attention of the 
only man on board so easily monopolized. There were so many 
pretty faces among them that I wavered. I talked idly among 
them, interested to see what overtures and how much of an 
impression I might make. My natural love of womankind 
made them all inviting. 

When the train drew into Chicago we were met by a tally- 
ho, which the obliging Mr. Dean had been kind enough to 
announce to each and every one of us as the train stopped. 
The idea of riding to the "World's Fair in such a thing and 
with this somewhat conspicuous party of school-teachers went 
very much against the grain. Being very conscious of my 
personal dignity in the presence of others and knowing the 
American and middle-West attitude toward all these new 
and persistently derided toys and pleasures of the effete 
East and England, I was inclined to look upon this one 
as out of place in Chicago. Besides, a canvas strip on the 
coach advertising the nature of this expedition infuriated 
me and seemed spiritually involved with the character of 
Mr. Dean. That bounder had done this, I was sure. I won- 
dered whether the sophisticated and well-groomed superin- 
tendent of schools would lend himself to any such thing when 
plainly it was to be written up in the Republic, but since 
he did not seem to mind it I was mollified; in fact, he took 
it all with a charming gayety and grace which eventually suc- 
ceeded in putting my own silly provincialism and pride to 
rout. He sat up in front with me and the driver discussing 
philosophy, education, the Fair, a dozen things, during which 
I made a great pretense at wise deductions and a wider read- 
ing than I had ever had. 

Once clear of the depot and turning into Adams Street, 
we were off behind six good horses through as interesting a 
business section as one might wish to see, its high buildings 



246 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

(the earliest and most numerous in America) and its mass of 
congested traffic making a brisk summer morning scene. I 
was reengaged by Michigan Avenue, that splendid boulevard 
with its brief vista of the lake, which was whipped to cotton- 
tops this bright morning by a fresh wind, and then the long 
residence-lined avenue to the south with its wealth of new 
and pretentious homes, its smart paving and lighting, its 
crush of pleasure traffic hurrying townward or to the Fair. 
"Within an hour we were assigned rooms in a comfortable hotel 
near the Fair grounds, one of those hastily and yet fairly 
well constructed buildings which later were changed into flats 
or apartments. One wall of this hotel, as I now discovered, 
the side on which my room was, faced a portion of the Fair 
grounds, and from my windows I could see some of its classic 
facades, porticoes, roofs, domes, lagoons. All at once and out 
of nothing in this dingy city of six or seven hundred thousand 
which but a few years before had been a wilderness of wet 
grass and mud flats, and by this lake which but a hundred 
years before was a lone silent waste, had now been reared this 
vast and harmonious collection of perfectly constructed and 
snowy buildings, containing in their delightful interiors the 
artistic, mechanical and scientific achievements of the world. 
Greece, Italy, India, Egypt, Japan, Germany, South America, 
the West and East Indies, the Arctics — all represented ! I 
have often thought since how those pessimists who up to that 
time had imagined that nothing of any artistic or scientific 
import could possibly be brought to fruition in America? 
especially in the middle West, must have opened their eyes 
as I did mine at the sight of this realized dream of beauty, this 
splendid picture of the world's own hope for itself. I have 
long marveled at it and do now as I recall it, its splendid Court 
of Honor, with its monumental stateliness and simple gran- 
deur; the peristyle with its amazing grace of columns and 
sculptured figures ; the great central arch with its triumphal 
quadriga; the dome of the Administration Building with its 
daring nudes; the splendid groupings on the Agricultural 
Building, as well as those on the Manufacturers ' and Women 's 
buildings. It was not as if many minds had labored toward 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 247 

this great end, or as if the great raw city which did not quite 
understand itself as yet had endeavored to make a great show, 
but rather as though some brooding spirit of beauty, inherent 
possibly in some directing over-soul, had waved a magic 
wand quite as might have Prospero in The Tempest or Queen 
Mab in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and lo, this fairyland. 

In the morning when I came down from my room I fell 

in with Miss W in the diningroom and was thrilled by the 

contact. She was so gay, good-natured, smiling, unaffected. 
And with her now was a younger sister of whom I had not 
heard and who had come to Chicago by a different route to 
join her. I was promptly introduced, and we sat down at 
the same table. It was not long before we were joined by the 
others, and then I could see by the exchange of glances that 
it was presumed that I had fallen a victim to this charmer of 
the night before. But already the personality of the younger 
sister was appealing to me quite as much as the elder. She 
was so radiant of humor, freckled, plump, laughing and with 
such an easy and natural mode of address. Somehow she 
struck me as knowing more of life than her sister, being more 
sophisticated and yet quite as innocent. 

After breakfast the company broke up into groups of two 
and three. Each had plans for the day and began talking 
them over. 

"We started off finally for the Fair gate and on the way I 
had an opportunity to study some of the other members of 
the party and make up my mind as to whether I really pre- 
ferred her above all. Despite my leaning toward Miss W 

I now discovered that there was a number whose charms, if 

not superior to those of Miss W , were greater than I had 

imagined, while some of those who had attracted me the night 
before were being modified by little traits of character or 
mannerism which I did not like. Among them was one rosy 
black-haired Irish girl whose solid beauty attracted me very 
much. She was young and dark and robust, with the air of 
a hoyden. I looked at her, quite taken by her snapping black 
eyes, but nothing came of it for the moment: we were all 
becoming interested in the Fair. 



248 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Together, then, we drifted for an hour or more in this 
world of glorious sights, an hour or more of dreaming over 
the arches, the reflections in the water, the statues, the 
shadowy throngs by the steps of the lagoons moving like 
figures in a dream. Was it real? I sometimes wonder, for it 
is all gone. Gone the summer days and nights, the air, the 
color, the form, the mood. In its place is a green park by 
a lake, still beautiful but bereft, a city that grows and grows, 
ever larger, but harder, colder, grayer. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

Possibly it was the brightness and freshness of this first 
day, the romance of an international fair in America, the 
snowy whiteness of the buildings against the morning sun, 
a blue sky and a bluer lake, the lagoons weaving in and out, 
achieving a lightness and an airiness wholly at war with 
anything that this Western world had as yet presented, which 
caused me to be swept into a dream from which I did not 
recover for months. I walked away a little space with my 
friend of the night before, learning more of her home and 
environment. As I saw her now, she seemed more and more 
natural, winsome, inviting. Humor seemed a part of her, 
and romance, as well as understanding and patience, a quiet 
and restful and undisturbed patience. I liked her immensely. 
She seemed from the first to offer me an understanding and a 
sympathy which I had never yet realized in any one. She 
smiled at my humor, appreciated my moods. Returning to my 
room late in the afternoon I was conscious of a difficult task, 
what to write that was worth while, and yet so deeply moved 
by it all that I could have clapped my hands for joy. I 
wanted to versify or describe it — a mood which youth will 
understand and maturity smile at, which causes the mind to 
sing, to set forth on fantastic pilgrimages. 

But if I wrote anything worth while I cannot now recall it. 
I was too eager to loaf and dream and do nothing at all, almost 
too idle to concentrate on what I had been called upon to do. 
I sent off something, a thousand or so words of drivel or 
rapture, and then settled to my real task of seeing the Fair 
by night and by day. Now that I was here I was cheered 
by the thought that very soon, within a day or two at most, 
I should be able to seek out and crow over all my old familiars, 
Maxwell, Dunlap, Brady, Hutchinson, a considerable group 

of newspaper men, as well as my brothers A and E , 

249 



250 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

who were here employed somewhere, and my father and 
several sisters. 

For my father, who was now seventy-two years of age, I 
had, all of a sudden, as I have indicated above, the greatest 
sympathy. At home, up to my seventeenth or eighteenth 
birthday, before I got out in the world and began to make 
my own way, I had found him fussy, cranky, dosed with too 
much religion; but in spite of all this and the quarrels and 
bickerings which arose because of it there had always been 
something tender in his views, charming, poetic and apprecia- 
tive. Now I felt sorry for him. A little while before and 
after my mother's death it had seemed to me that he had be- 
come unduly wild on the subject of the church and the here- 
after, was annoying us all with his persistent preachments 
concerning duty, economy and the like, the need of living a 
clean, saving, religious life. Now, after a year out in the 
world, with a broadening knowledge of very different things, 
I saw him in an entirely different light. While realizing that 
he was irritable, crotchety, domineering, I suddenly saw him 
as just a broken old man whose hopes and ambitions had 
come to nothing, whose religion, impossible as it was to me, 
was still a comfort and a blessing to him. Here he was, alone, 
his wife dead, his children scattered and not very much in- 
terested in him any more. 

Now that I was here in the city again, I decided that 
as soon as I could arrange my other affairs I would go over 
on the west side and look him up and bring him to see the 
Fair, which of course he had not seen. For I knew that with 
his saving, worrying, almost penurious disposition he would 
not be able to bring himself to endure the expense, even 
though tickets were provided him, of visiting the Fair 
alone. He had had too much trouble getting enough to live 
on in these latter years to permit him to enjoy anything 
which cost money. I could hear him saying: "No, no. I can- 
not afford it. We have too many debts. ' ' He had not always 
been so but time and many troubles had made the saving of 
money almost a mania with him. 

The next morning, therefore, I journeyed to the west side 



I 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 251 

and finally found him quite alone, as it chanced, the 
other members of the family then living with him having 
gone out. I shall never forget how old he looked after my 
year's absence, how his eyelids twitched. After a slightly 
quizzical and attempted hard examining glance at me his 
lips twitched and tears welled to his eyes. He was so utterly 
done for, as he knew, and dependent on the courtesy of his 
children and life. I cried myself and rubbed his hands and 
his hair, then told him that I was doing well and had come 
to take him to see the Fair, that I had tickets — a passbook, 
no less — and that it shouldn't cost him a penny. Naturally 
he was surprised and glad to see me, so anxious to know if 
I still adhered to the Catholic faith and went to confession and 
communion regularly. In the old days this had been the 
main bone of contention between us. 

"Tell me, Dorsch," he said not two minutes after I ar- 
rived, "do you still keep up your church duties?" 

When I hesitated for a moment, uncertain what to say, he 
went on* "You ought to do that, you know. If you should 

die in a state of mortal sin " 

"Yes, yes," I interrupted, making up my mind to give him 
peace on this score if I never did another thing in this world, 
' ' I always go right along, once every month or six weeks. ' ' 

"You really do that, do you?" he asked, eyeing me more 
in appeal than doubt, though judging by my obstinate past 
he must have doubted. 

"Yes," I insisted, "sure. I always go regularly." 
" I 'm glad of that, ' ' he went on hopefully. ' ' I worry so. I 
think of you and the rest of the children so much. You're 
a young man now and out in the world, and if you neglect 

your religious duties " and he paused as if in a grave 

quandary. "When you're out like that I know it's hard to 
think of the church and your duties, but you shouldn't 

neglect them " 

1 ' Oh, Lord ! " I thought. ' ' Now he 's off again ! This is the 
same old story — religion, religion, religion!" 

' ' But I do go, " I insisted. ' ' You mustn 't worry about me. ' ' 
"I know," he said, with a sudden catch in his voice, "but 



252 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

I can 't help it. You know how it is with the other children : 
they don't always do right in that respect. Paul is away on 
the stage ; I don 't know whether he goes to church any more. 

A and E are here, but they don't come here much — 

I haven't seen them in I don't know how long — months " 

I resolved to plead with E and A when I saw 

them. 

He was sitting in a big armchair facing a rear window, and 
now he took my hand again and held it. Soon I felt hot tears 
on it. 

"Pop," I said, pulling his head against me and smoothing 
it, "you mustn't cry. Things aren't so bad as all that. The 
children are all right. We'll probably be able to do better and 
more for you than we've ever done." 

"I know, I know," he said after a little while, overcoming 
his emotion, "but I'm getting so old, and I don't sleep much 
any more — just an hour or two. I lie there and think. In the 
morning I get up at four sometimes and make my coffee. Then 
the days are so long. ' ' 

I cried too. The long days . . . the fading interests 
. . . Mother gone and the family broken up. . . . 

"I know," I said. "I haven't acted just right — none of us 
have. I'll write you from now on when I'm away, and send 
you some money once in a while. I 'm going to get you a big 
overcoat for next winter. And now I want you to come over 
with me to the Fair. I've tickets, and you'll enjoy it. I'm 
a press representative now, a traveling correspondent. I'll 
show you everything. ' ' 

After due persuasion he got his hat and stick and came 
with me. We took a car and an elevated road, which finally 
landed us at the gate, and then, for as long as his strength 
would endure, we wandered about looking at the enormous 
buildings, the great Ferris Wheel, the caravels Nina, Pinta 
and Santa Maria in which Columbus sailed to America, the 
convent of La Rabida (which, because it related to the Trap- 
pists, fascinated him), and finally the German Village on the 
Midway, as German and ordentlich as ever a German would 
wish, where we had coffee and little German cakes with cara- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 253 

way seeds on them and some pot cheese with red pepper and 
onions. He was so interested and amused by the vast spectacle 
that he could do little save exclaim: "By crackie!" "This 
is now beautiful!" or "That is now wonderful!" In the 
German village he fell into a conversation with a buxom 
German frau who had a stand there and who hailed from some 
part of Germany about which he seemed to know, and then 
all was well indeed. It was long before I could get him away. 
These delightful visits were repeated only about four times 
during my stay of two weeks, when he admitted that it was 
tiring and he had seen enough. 

Another morning when I had not too much to do I looked 
up my brother E , who was driving a laundry wagon some- 
where on the south side, and got him to come out evenings 

and Sundays, as well as A , who was connected with an 

electric plant as assistant of some kind. I recall now, with 
an odd feeling as to the significance of relationship and 

family ties generally, how keenly important his and E 's 

interests were to me then and how I suffered because I thought 
they were not getting along as well as they should. Looking 
in a shoe window in Pittsburgh a year or two later, I actually 

choked with emotion because I thought that maybe E 

did not earn enough to keep himself looking well. A 

always seemed more or less thwarted in his ambitions, and 
whenever I saw him I felt sad because, like so many millions 
of others in this grinding world, he had never had a real 
chance. Life is so casual, and luck comes to many who sleep 
and flies from those who try. I always felt that under more 

advantageous circumstances A would have done well. 

He was so wise, if slightly cynical, full of a laughing humor. 
His taste for literature and artistic things in general was high, 
although entirely untrained. Like myself he had a turn for 
the problems of nature, constantly wondering as to the why 
of this or that and seeking the answer in a broader knowledge. 
But long hours of work and poor pay seemed to handicap 
him in his search. I was sad beyond words about his condi- 
tion, and urged him to come to St. Louis and try his luck 
there, which he subsequently did. 



254 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Another thing I did was to visit the old Globe office in 
Fifth Avenue downtown, only to find things in a bad way 
there. Although Brady, Hutchinson and Dunlap were still 
there the paper was not paying, was, in fact, in danger of 
immediate collapse. John B. MacDonald, its financial backer 
or angel, having lost a fortune in trying to make it pay and 
win an election with it, was about ready to quit and the paper 
was on its last legs. Could I get them jobs in St. Louis? 
Maxwell had gone to the Tribune and was now a successful 
copy-reader there. ... In my new summer suit and 
straw hat and with my various credentials, I felt myself 
to be quite a personage. How much better I had done than 
these men who had been in the business longer than I had! 
Certainly I would see what I could do. They must write me. 
They could find me now at such-and-such a hotel. 

The sweets of success! 

In the Newspaper Press Association offices in the great 
Administration Building several of my friends from the press 
showed up and here we foregathered to talk. Daily in this 
building at eight or nine or ten at night I filed a report or 
message about one thousand words long and was pleased to 
see by the papers that arrived that my text was used about 
as I wrote it. Loving the grounds of the Fair so much, I 
browsed there nearly all day long and all evening, escorting 

now one girl and now another, but principally Miss W 

and her sister. Almost unconsciously I was being fascinated 

by these two, with my Miss W the more ; and yet I was 

not content to confine myself to her but was constantly look- 
ing here and there, being lured by a number of the others. 

Thus one afternoon, after I had visited the Administration 

Building and filed my dispatch rather early, Miss W 

having been unable to be with me at the Fair, I returned 
to the hotel, a little weary of sightseeing, and finding an upper 
balcony which faced the Fair sat there in a rocker awaiting 
the return of some of the party. Presently, as I was rest- 
ing and humming to myself, there came down to the parlor, 
which adjoined this balcony, that rosy Irish girl, Miss Ginity, 
who had attracted me the very first morning. She seemed 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 255 

to be seeking that room in order to sing and play, there being 
a piano here. She was dressed in a close-fitting suit of white 
linen, which set off her robust little figure to perfection. Her 
heavy, oily black hair was parted severely in the middle and 
hung heavily over her white temples. She had a rich-blooded, 
healthy, aggressive look, not unmarked by desire. 

I was looking through the window when she came in and 
Was wondering if she would discover me, when she did. She 
smiled, and I waved to her to come out. "We talked about 
the Fair and my duties in connection with it. "When I ex- 
plained the nature of my dispatches she wanted to know if I 
had mentioned her name yet. I assured her that I had, 
and this pleased her. I had the feeling that she liked me 
and that I could influence her if I chose. 

""What has become of your friend Miss "W ?" she finally 

asked with a touch of malice when I looked at her too kindly. 

"I don't know. I haven't seen her since yesterday or the 
day before," which was not true. ""What makes you ask 
that?" 

"Oh, I thought you rather liked her," she said boldly, 
throwing up her chin and smiling. 

"And what made you think it?" I asked calmly. It was 
in my mind that I could master and deceive her as to this, 
and I proposed to try. 

"Oh, I just thought so. You seemed to like her company." 

"Not any more than I do that of others," I insisted with 
great assurance. ' ' She 's interesting, that 's all. I didn 't think 
I was showing any preference." 

"Oh, I'm just joking," she laughed. "I really don't 
think anything about it. One of the other girls made the 
remark. ' ' 

"Well, she's wrong," I said indifferently. 

But I could see that she wasn't joking. I could also see 
that I had relieved her mind. My pose of indifference had 
quelled her feeling that I was not wholly free. "We sat and 
talked until dinner, and then I asked her if she would like 
to go for a stroll in the park, to which she agreed. By now 
we were obviously drifting toward each other emotionally, 



256 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and I thought how fine it would be to idle and dream with 
this girl in the moonlight. 

After dinner, when we started out, the air was soft and 
balmy and the moon was just rising over the treetops in the 
East. A faint odor of fresh flowers and fresh leaves was 
abroad and the night seemed to rest in a soothing stillness. 
From the Midway came the sounds of muffled drums and 
flutes, vibrant with the passion of the East. Before us were 
the wide stretches of the park, dark and suggestive of intrigue 
where groups of trees were gathered in silent, motionless 
array, in others silvered by a fairy brightness which suggested 
a world of romance and feeling. 

I walked silently on with her, flooded with a voiceless feeling 
of ecstasy. Now I was surely proving to myself that I was 
not entirely helpless in the presence of girls. This time of 
idleness and moonlight was in such smooth consonance with 
my most romantic wishes. She was not so romantic, but the 
ardent luxury of her nature appeared to answer to the ro- 
mantic call of mine. 

"Isn't this wonderful?" I said at last, seeking to interest 
her. 

"Yes," she replied, almost practically. "I've been won- 
dering why some of the girls don't come over here at night. 
It 's so wonderful. But I suppose they 're tired. ' ' 

"They're not as strong as you, that's it. You're so vigor- 
ous. I was thinking today how healthy you look." 

"Were you? And I was just thinking what my mother 
would say if she knew I was out here with a total stranger. ' ' 

"You told me you lived in St. Louis, I think?" I said. 

' ' Yes, out in the north end. Near 'Fallon Park. ' ' 

"Well, then, I'll get to see you when you go back," I 
laughed. 

"Oh, will you?" she returned coquettishly. "How do you 
know?" 

"Well, won't I?" 

The thought flashed across my mind that once I had been 
in this selfsame park with Alice several years before; we 
had sat under a tree not so very far from here, near a pagoda 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 257 

silvered by the moon, and had listened to music played in 
the distance. I remembered how I had whispered sweet 
nothings and kissed her to my heart 's content. 

"Well, you may if you're good," she replied. 

I began jesting with her now. I deliberately descended 
from the ordinary reaches of my intelligence, anxious to 
match her own interests with some which would seem allied. 
I wanted her to like me, although I felt all the while that we 
were by no means suited temperamentally. She was too 
commonplace and unimaginative, although so attractive 
physically. 

We sat in silence for a time, and I slipped my hand down 
and laid hold of her fingers. She did not stir, pretending not 
to notice, but I felt that she was thrilling also. 

"You asked about Miss W ," I said. "What made you 

do that?" 

"Oh, I thought you liked her. Why shouldn't I?" 

' ' It never occurred to you that I might like some one else ? ' ' 

' ' Certainly not. Why should I ? " 

I pressed her fingers softly. She turned on me all at once 
a face so white and tense that it showed fully the feeling 
that now gripped her. It was almost as if she were break- 
ing under an intense nervous strain which she was at- 
tempting to conceal. 

"I thought you might," I replied daringly. "There is 
some one, you know." I was surprising myself. 

' ' Is there ? ' ' Her voice sounded weak. She did not attempt 
to look at me now, and I was wondering how far I would go. 

"You couldn't guess, of course?" 

"No. Why should I?" 

"Look at me," I said quietly. 

■ ' All right, ' ' she said with a little indifferent shrug. " I '11 
look at you. There now ; what of it ? " 

Again that intense, nervous, strained look. Her lips were 
parted in a shy frightened smile, showing her pretty teeth. 
Her eyes were touched with points of light where the moon- 
light, falling over my shoulder, shone upon them. It gave her 
whole face an eerie, almost spectral paleness, something mys- 



258 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

tical and insubstantial, which spoke of the brevity and non- 
endurance of all these things. She was far more wonderful 
here than ever she could have been in clear daylight. 

"You have beautiful eyes," I remarked. 

"Oh," she shrugged disdainfully, "is that all?" 

"No. You have beautiful teeth and hair — such hair!" 

"You mustn't grow sentimental," she commented, not re- 
moving her hand. 

I slipped my arm about her waist and she moved nervously. 

"And you still can't guess who?" I said finally. 

"No," she replied, keeping her face from me. 

' ' Then I '11 tell you, ' ' and putting my free hand to her cheek 
I turned her face to me. 

I studied her closely, and then in a moment the last shred 
of reluctance and coquetry in her seemed to evaporate. At 
the touch of my hand on her cheek she seemed to change : the 
whole power of her ardent nature -was rising. At last she 
seemed to be yielding completely, and I put my lips to hers 
and kissed her warmly, then pressed her close and held her. 

"Now do you know?" I asked after a time. 

"Yes," she nodded, and for a proffered kiss returned an 
ardent one of her own. 

I was beside myself with astonishment and delight. For 
the life of me I could not explain to myself how it was that I 
had achieved this result so swiftly. Something in the idyllic 
atmosphere, something in our temperaments, I fancied, made 
this quick spiritual and material understanding possible, but 
I wanted to know how. For a time we sat thus in the moon- 
light, I holding her hand and pressing her waist. Yet I could 
not feel that I liked her beyond the charm of her physical 
appearance, but that was enough at present. Physical beauty, 
Avith not too much grossness, was all I asked then — youth, a 
measure of innocence, and beauty. I pretended to have a real 
feeling for her and to be struck by her beauty, which was not 
wholly untrue. My feelings, however, as I well knew, were of 
so light and variable a character that.it seemed almost a shame 
to lure her in this fashion. Why had I done it? It was de- 
cidedly unfortunate for her, I now thought, that we two 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 259 

should now meet under the same roof, with Miss "W and 

others, perhaps making a third, fourth, or fifth possibly, but 
I anticipated no troublesome results. I might keep them 
apart. Anyhow, if I could not, my relationship in either case 
had not become earnest enough to cause me to worry. I hoped, 

however, to make it so in the case of Miss W ; Miss 

Ginity I knew from the first to be only a momentary flame. 



CHAPTER XL 

As I hoped, there were no ill effects from this little 

diversion, but by now I was so interested in Miss W 

that I felt a little unfair to her. As I look back on it I can 
imagine no greater error of mind or temperament than that 
which drew me to her, considering my own variable tendencies 
and my naturally freedom-loving point of view. But since 
we are all blind victims of chance and given to far better 
hind-sight than fore-sight I have no complaint to make. It 
is quite possible that this was all a part of my essential destiny 
or development, one of those storm-breeding mistakes by 
which one grows. Life seems thus often casually to thrust 
upon one an experience which is to prove illuminating or 
disastrous. 

To pick up the thread of my narrative, I saw Miss Ginity 
at breakfast, but she showed no sign that we had been out 
together the previous evening. Instead, she went on her way 
briskly as though nothing had happened, and this made her 

rather alluring again in my eyes. When Miss W came 

down I suffered a slight revulsion of feeling : she was so fresh 
and innocent, so spiritually and mentally above any such 
quick and compromising relationship as that which I and 
my new acquaintance had established the night before. I 
planned to be more circumspect in my relations with Miss 
Ginity and to pay more attention to Miss W . 

This plan was facilitated by the way in which the various 
members of the party now grouped and adjusted themselves. 

Miss W and her sister seemed to prefer to go about 

together, with me as an occasional third, and Miss Ginity 
and several of her new acquaintances made a second com- 
pany, with whom I occasionally walked. Thus the distribu- 
tion of my attentions was in no danger of immediate detection 
and I went gayly on. 

260 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 261 

A peculiar characteristic at this time and later was that 
I never really expected any of these relationships to endure. 
Marriage might be well enough for the average man but it 
never seemed to me that I should endure in it, that it would 
permanently affect my present free relationship with the 
world. I might be greatly grieved at times in a high emotional 
way because they could not last, but that was rising to heights 
of sentiment which puzzled even myself. One of the things 
which troubled and astonished me was that I could like two, 
three, and even more women at the same time, like them very 
much indeed. It seemed strange that I could yearn over them, 
now one and now another. A good man, I told myself, would 
not do this. The thought would never occur to him, or if 
it did he would repress it sternly. Obviously, if not pro- 
foundly evil I was a freak and had best keep my peculiar 
thoughts and desires to myself if I wanted to have anything 
to do with good people. I should be entirely alone, perhaps 
/ even seized upon by the law. 

During the next two weeks I saw much of both Miss W 

and Miss Ginity. By day I usually accompanied Miss W 

and her sister from place to place about the grounds and of 
an evening strolled with Miss Ginity, all the while wonder- 
ing if Miss W really liked me, whether her present feel- 
ing was likely to turn to something deeper. I felt a very 
definite point of view in her, very different from mine. In her 
was none of the variability that troubled me : if ever a person 
was fixed in conventional views it was she. One life, one love 
would have answered for her exactly. She could have ac- 
cepted any condition, however painful or even degrading, 
providing she was bolstered up by what she considered 
the moral law. "To have and to hold, in sickness and in 
health, in poverty and in riches, until death do us part." I 
think the full force of these laws must have been imbibed 
with her mother's milk. 

As for Miss Ginity, although she was conventional enough, 
I did feel that she might be persuaded to relax the moral 
rule in favor of one at least, and so was congratulating my- 
self upon having achieved an affectional triumph. She may 



262 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

not have been deeply impressed by my physical attraction 
but there was something about me nevertheless which seemed 
to hold her. After a few days she left the hotel to visit some 
friends or relatives, to whom she had to pay considerable 
attention, but in my box nights or mornings, if by any chance 
I had not seen her, I would find notes explaining where 
she could be found in the evening, usually at a drugstore near 
the park or her new apartment, and we would take a few 
minutes' stroll in the park. Such a fever of emotion as 
she displayed at times! "Oh dear!" she would exclaim in 
an intense hungry way upon seeing me. ' ' Oh, I could hardly 
wait!" And once in the park she would throw her strong 
young arms about me and kiss me in a fiery, hungry way. 
There was one last transport the night before she left for 
Michigan for a visit, when if I had been half the Don Juan 
I longed to be we might have passed the boundary line ; but 
lack of courage on my part and inexperience on hers kept 
us apart. 

When I saw her again in St. Louis 

But that is still another story. 



CHAPTER XLI 

Thus these days sped swiftly and ecstatically by. For once 
in my life I seemed to be truly and consistently happy, and 
that in this very city where but a year or two before I had 
suffered such keen distress. Toward the middle of the second 
week Miss Ginity left for Michigan, and then I had Miss 

W all to myself. By now I had come to feel an intense 

interest in her, an elation over the mere thought of being with 
her. In addition to this joy my mind and body seemed to 
be responding in some ecstatic fashion to Chicago and the 
Fair as a whole, the romance and color of it all, the winelike 
quality of the air, the raw, fresh, young force of the city, so 
vividly manifested in its sounding streets, its towering new 
buildings, its far-flung lines of avenues and boulevards, and, 
by way of contrast, its vast regions of middle and lower class 
poor. When we lived here as a family I had always thought 
that poverty was no great hardship. The poor were poor 
enough, in all conscience, but oh, the singing hope of the 
city itself! Up, up, and to work! Here were tasks for a 
million hands. In spite of my attachment to the Fair and Miss 

Ginity and Miss W I was still lured cityward, to visit 

the streets in which we had once lived or where I had walked 
so much in the old days, mere journeys of remembrance. 

But as I wandered about I realized that the city was not 
my city any more, that life was a baseless, shifting thing, 
its seeming ties uncertain and unstable and that that which 
one day we held dear was tomorrow gone, to come no more. 
How plain it was, I thought and with some surprise, so 
ignorant is youth, that even seemingly brisk organizations 
such as the Globe here in Chicago and some others with which 
I had been connected could wither or disappear completely, 
one's commercial as well as one's family life be scattered to 
the four winds. Sensing this, I now felt an intense sense of 

263 



264 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

loneliness and homesickness, for what I could scarcely say: 
for each and every one of past pleasant moments, I pre- 
sume, our abandoned home in Flournoy Street, now rented 
to another; my old desk at the Globe, now occupied by an- 
other; Alice's former home on this south side; N 's in 

Indiana Street. I was gloomy over having no fixed abode, 
no intimates worthy the name here who could soothe and 
comfort me in such an hour as this. Curiously enough, at such 

moments I felt an intense leaning toward Miss W , who 

seemed to answer with something stable and abiding. I am 
at a loss even now to describe it but so it was, and it was 
more than anything else a sense of peace and support which 
I found in her presence, a something that suggested durability 
and warmth — possibly the whole closely-knit family atmos- 
phere which was behind her and upon which she relied. She 
would listen, apparently with interest, to all my youthful 
and no doubt bragging accounts of my former newspaper 
experiences here as well as in St. Louis, which I painted in 
high colors with myself as a newspaper man deep in the 
councils of my paper. Walking about the Fair grounds one 
night I wished to take her hand but so overawed was I by 
her personality that I could scarcely muster up the courage 
to do it. When I at last did she shyly withdrew her hand, 
pretending not to notice. 

The same thing happened an evening or two later when 
I persuaded her and her sister to accompany me and a 
fellow-reporter whom I met in Chicago, to Lincoln Park, 
where was a band concert and the playing of a colored 
fountain given by the late C. T. Yerkes, then looked upon as 
one of the sights of the city. I recall how warm and clear 
was the evening, our trip northward on the newly-built "Alley 
L, " so-called because no public thoroughfare could be secured 
for it, how when we got off at Congress Street, where the 
enormous store of Siegel, Cooper & Company had only recently 
been opened, we there took a surface cable to Lincoln Park. 
It was barely dusk when we reached the park, and the foun- 
tain did not play until nine ; but pending its colored wonders, 
we walked along the shore of the lake in the darkness, alone, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 265 

her sister and my friend having been swallowed up in the 
great crowd. 

Once near the lake shore we were alone. I found myself 
desperately interested without knowing how to proceed. It 
was a state of hypnosis, I fancy, in which I felt myself to 
be rapturously happy because more or less convinced of her 
feeling for me, and yet gravely uncertain as to whether she 
would ever permit herself to be ensnared in love. She was 
so poised and serene, so stable and yet so tender. I felt 
foolish, unworthy. Were not the crude brutalities of love 
too much for her? She might like me now, but the slightest 
error on my part in word or deed would no doubt drive her 
away and I should never see her again. I wanted to put my 
arm about her waist or hold her hand, but it was all beyond 
me then. She seemed too remote, a little unreal. 

Finally, moved by the idyllic quality of it all, I left her 
and strolled down to the very edge of the lake where the 
water was lapping the sand. I had the feeling that if she 
really cared for me she would follow me, but she did not. She 
waited sedately on the rise above, but I felt all the while that 
she was drawing toward me intensely and holding me as in 
a vise. Half -angry but still fascinated, I returned, anything 
but the master of this situation. In truth, she had me as 
completely in tow as any woman could wish and was able, 
consciously or unconsciously, to regulate the progress of this 
affair to suit herself. 

But nothing came of this except a deeper feeling of her 
exceptional charm. I was more than ever moved by her 
grace and force. What sobriety ! What delicacy of feature ! 
Her big eyes, soft and appealing, her small red mouth, her 
abundance of red hair, a constant enticement. 

Before she left for her home, one of the inland counties 
about ninety miles from St. Louis, all that was left of the 
party, which was not many, paid a visit to St. Joe on the 
Michigan shore, opposite Chicago. It was a deliciously 
bright and warm Sunday. The steamers were comfortable 
and the beach at St. Joe perfect, a long coast of lovely white 
sand with the blue waves breaking over it. En route, because 



266 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

of the size of the party and the accidental arrangement of 

friends, I was thrown in with R , the sister of my adored 

one, and in spite of myself, I found myself being swiftly 
drawn to her, desperately so, and that in the face of the 
strong attachment for her sister. There was something so 
cheering and whole-souled about her point of view, something 
so provoking and elusive, a veritable sprite of gayety and 
humor. For some reason, both on the boat and in the water, 
she devoted herself to me, until she seemed suddenly to realize 
what was happening to us both. Then she desisted and I 
saw her no more, or very little of her; but the damage had 
been done. I was intensely moved by her, even dreaming of 
changing my attentions; but she was too fond of her sister 
to allow anything like that. From then on she avoided me, 
with the sole intent, as I could see, of not injuring her sister. 

"We returned at night, I with the most troubled feelings 
about the whole affair, and it was only after I had returned to 

St. Louis that the old feeling for S came back and I began 

to see and think of her as I had that night in Lincoln Park. 
Then her charm seemed to come with full force and for days 
I could think of nothing else : the Fair, the hotel, the evening 
walks, and what she was doing now; but even this was shot 
through with the most jumbled thoughts of her sister and 
Miss Ginity. ... I leave it to those who can to solve this 

mystery of the affections. Miss W , as I understood it, 

was not to come back to St. Louis until the late autumn, when 
she could be found in an aristocratic suburb about twenty 
miles out, teaching of course, whereas Miss Ginity was little 
more than a half hour's ride from my room. 

But, as I now ruefully thought, I had not troubled to look 
up Alice, although once she had meant so much of Chicago 
and happiness to me. What kind of man was I to become thus 
indifferent and then grieve over it? 



CHAPTER XLII 

To return and take up the ordinary routine of reporting 
after these crystal days of beauty and romance was anything 
but satisfactory. Gone was the White City with its towers and 
pinnacles and the wide blue wash of lake at its feet. After 
the Fair and the greater city, St. Louis seemed prosaic indeed. 
Still, I argued, I was getting along here better than I had 
in Chicago. When I went down to the office I found Wandell 
poring as usual over current papers. He was always scrib- 
bling and snipping, like a little old leathery Punch, in his 
mussy office. The mere sight of him made me wish that I 
were through with the newspaper business forever : it brought 
back all the regularity of the old days. When should I get 
out of it? I now began to ask myself for the first time. 
What was my real calling in life ? Should I ever again have 
my evenings to myself? When should I be able to idle and 
dawdle as I had seen other people doing? I did not then 
realize how few the leisure class really comprises ; I was always 
taking the evidence of one or two passing before my gaze 
as indicating a vast company. I was one of the unfortunates 
who were shut out ; I was one whose life was to be a wretched 
tragedy for want of means to enjoy it now when I had youth 
and health ! 

"Well, did you have a good time?" asked Wandell. 

"Yes," I replied dolefully. "That's a great show up 
there. It's beautiful." 

"Any of the girls fall in love with you?" he croaked good- 
humoredly. 

"Oh, it wasn't as bad as that." 

"Well, I suppose you're ready to settle down now to hard 
work. I 've got a lot of things here for you to do. ' ' 

I cannot say that I was cheered by this. It was hard to 

267 



268 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

have to settle down to ordinary reporting after all these recent 
glories. It seemed to me as though an idyllic chapter of my 
life had been closed forever. Thereafter, I undertook one 
interesting assignment and another but without further de- 
veloping my education as to the workings of life. I was begin- 
ning to tire of reporting, and one more murder or political 
or social mystery aided me in no way. 

I recall, however, taking on a strange murder mystery over 
in Illinois which kept me stationed in a small countyseat for 
days, and all the time there was nothing save a sense of 
hard work about it all. Again, there was a train robbery that 
took me into the heart of a rural region where were nothing 
but farmers and small towns. Again there was a change of 
train service which permitted the distribution of St. Louis 
newspapers earlier than the Chicago papers in territory which 
was somehow disputed between them and because of which I 
was called upon to make a trip between midnight and dawn, 
riding for hours in the mailcar, and then describing fully 
this supposedly wonderful special newspaper service which 
was to make all the inhabitants of this region wiser, kinder, 
richer because they could get the St. Louis papers before 
they could those of Chicago ! I really did not think much of 
it, although I was congratulated upon having penned a fine 
picture. 

One thing really did interest me: A famous mindreader 
having come to town and wishing to advertise his skill, he 
requested the BepubUc to appoint a man or a committee to 
ride with him in a carriage through the crowded downtown 
streets while he, blindfolded but driving, followed the direct- 
ing thoughts of the man who should sit on the seat beside 
him. I was ordered to get up this committee, which I did — 
Dick, Peter, Rodenberger and myself were my final choice, I 
sitting on the front seat and doing the thinking while the 
mindreader raced in and out between cars and wagons, turn- 
ing sharp corners, escaping huge trucks by a hair only, to 
wind up finally at Dick 's door, dash up the one flight of stairs 
and into the room (the door being left open for this), and 
then climb up on a chair placed next to a wardrobe and, as 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 269 

per my thought, all decided on beforehand, take down that 
peculiar head of Alley Sloper and hand it to me. 

Now this thing, when actually worked out under my very 
eyes and with myself doing the thinking, astounded me and 
caused me to ponder the mysteries of life more than ever. 
How could another man read my mind like that ? What was 
it that perceived and interpreted my thoughts? It gave me 
an immense kick mentally, one that stays by me to this day, 
and set me off eventually on the matters of psychology and 
chemic mysteries generally. When this was written up as 
true, as it was, it made a splendid story and attracted a great 
deal of attention. Once and for all, it cleared up my thoughts 
as to the power of mind over so-called matter and caused 
this "committee" to enter upon experiments of its own with 
hypnotists, spiritualists and the like, until we were fairly well 
satisfied as to the import of these things. I myself stood on 
the stomach of a thin hypnotized boy of not more than 
seventeen years of age, while his head was placed on one 
chair, his feet on another and no brace of any kind was put 
under his body. Yet his stomach held me up. But, having 
established the truth of such things for ourselves, we found no 
method of doing anything with our knowledge. It was practi- 
cally useless in this region, and decidedly taboo. 

Another individual who interested me quite as might a 
book or story was a spiritualist, a fat, sluglike Irish type, who 
came to town about this time and proved to be immensely 
successful in getting up large meetings, entrance to which he 
charged. Soon there were ugly rumors as to the orgiastic 
character of his seances, especially at his home where he ad- 
vertised to receive interested spiritualists in private. One day 
my noble and nosy city editor set me to the task of ferreting 
out all this, with the intention of sicking the moralists on the 
gentleman and so driving him out of town. Was it because 
Mr. Wandell, interested in morals or at least responding to 
the local sentiment for a moral city, considered this man a 
real menace to St. Louis and so wished to be rid of him? 
Not at all. Mr. Wandell cared no more for Mr. Mooney or 
the public or its subsurface morals than he cared for the 



270 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

polities of Beluchistan. In the heart of St. Louis at this 
very time, in Chestnut Street, was a large district devoted to 
just such orgies as this stranger was supposed to be perpetrat- 
ing ; but this area was never in the public eye, and you could 
not, for your life, put it there. The public apparently did 
not want it attacked, or if it did there were forces sufficiently 
powerful to keep it from obtaining its wishes. The police 
were supposed to extract regular payments from one and all 
in this area, as Rodenberger, in the little paper he ran, fre- 
quently charged, but this paper had no weight. The most 
amazing social complications occasionally led directly to one 
or another of these houses, as I myself had seen, but no 
comment was ever made on the peculiarity of the area as a 
whole or its persistence in the face of so much moral senti- 
ment. The vice crusaders never troubled it, neither did the 
papers or the churches or anybody else. But when it came to 
Mr. Mooney — well, here was an individual who could be easily 
and safely attacked, and so — 

Mr. Mooney had a large following and many defenders 
whose animosity or gullibility led them to look upon him as 
a personage of great import. He was unquestionably a shrewd 
and able manipulator, one of the finest quacks I ever saw. 
He would race up and down among the members of his 
large audience in his spiritualistic ' ' church meetings, ' ' his fat 
waxy eyelids closed, his immense white shirt-front shining, his 
dress coattails flying like those of a bustling butler or head- 
waiter, the while he exclaimed: "Is there any one here by 
the name of Peter? Is there any one here by the name of 
Augusta? There is an old white-bearded man here who says 
he has something to say to Augusta. And Peter — Peter, your 
sister says not to marry, that everything now troubling you 
will soon come out all right." 

He would open these meetings with spiritual invocations of 
one kind and another and pretend the profoundest religiosity 
and spirituality when as a matter of fact he was a faker of 
the most brazen stamp. As Wandell afterward showed me by 
clippings and police reports from other cities, he had been 
driven from one city to another, cities usually very far apart 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 271 

so that the news of his troubles might not spread too quickly. 
His last resting-place had been Norfolk, Virginia, and before 
that he had been in such widely scattered spots as Liverpool, 
San Francisco, Sydney, New South Wales. Always he had 
been immensely successful, drawing large crowds, taking up 
collections and doing a private seance business which must 
have netted him a tidy sum. Indeed in private life, as I 
soon found, he was a gourmet, a sybarite and a riant amorist, 
laughing in his sleeve at all his touts and followers. 

For some time I was unable to gather any evidence that 
would convict him of anything in a direct way. Once he 
found the Republic to be unfavorable, he became pugnacious 
and threatened to assault me if I ever came near him or his 
place or attempted to write up anything about him which was 
not true! On the other hand, Wandell, being equally deter- 
mined to catch him, insisted upon my following him up and 
exposing him. My task was not easy. I was compelled to 
hang about his meetings, trying to find some one who would 
tell me something definite against him. 

Going to his rooms one day when he was absent, I managed 
to meet his landlady who, when I told her that I was from 
the Republic and wanted to know something about Mr. 
Mooney's visitors, his private conduct and so forth, asked me 
to come in. At once I sensed something definite and import- 
ant, for I had been there before and had been turned away 
by this same woman. But today, for some reason she es- 
corted me very secretly to a room on the second floor where 
she closed and locked the door and then began a long story 
concerning the peculiar relations which existed between Mr. 
Mooney and some of his male and female disciples, especially 
the female ones. She finally admitted that she had been 
watching Mr. Mooney's rooms through a keyhole. For weeks 
past there had been various visitors whose comings and goings 
had meant little to her until they became "so regular," as 
she said, and Mr. Mooney so particularly engaged with them. 
Then, since Mr. Mooney's fame had been spreading and the 
Republic had begun to attack him, she had become most 
watchful and now, as she told me, he was "carrying on" 



272 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

most shamefully with one and another of his visitors, male 
and female. Just what these relations were she at first re- 
fused to state, but when I pointed out to her that unless she 
could furnish me with other and more convincing proof than 
her mere word or charge it would all be of small value, she 
unbent sufficiently to fix on one particular woman, whose 
card and a note addressed to Mr. Mooney she had evidently 
purloined from his room. These she produced and turned 
over to me with a rousing description of the nature of the 
visits. 

Armed with the card and note, I immediately proceeded to 
the west end where I soon found the house of the lady, 
determined to see whether she would admit this soft impeach- 
ment, whether I could make her admit it. I was a little un- 
certain then as to how I was to go about it. Suppose I 
should run into the lady's husband, I thought, or suppose 
they should come down together when I sent in my card? Or 
suppose that I charged her with what I knew and she called 
some one to her aid and had me thrown out or beaten up? 
Nevertheless I went nervously up the steps and rang the bell, 
whereupon a footman opened the door. 

"Who is it you wish to see?" 

I told him. 

"Have you an appointment with her?" 

"No, but I'm from the Republic, and you tell her that it 
is very important for her to see me. We have an article 
about her and a certain Mr. Mooney which we propose to 
print in the morning, and I think she will want to see me 
about it." I stared at him with a great deal of effrontery. 
He finally closed the door, leaving me outside, but soon re- 
turned and said: "You may come in." 

I walked into a large, heavily furnished reception-room, 
representing the best Western taste of the time, in which I 
nosed about thinking how fine it all was and wondering how 
I was to proceed about all this once she appeared. Suppose 
she proved to be a fierce and contentious soul well able to 
hold her own, or suppose there was some mistake about this 
letter or the statement of the landlady ! As I was walking up 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 273 

and down, quite troubled as to just what I should say, I 
heard the rustle of silk skirts. I turned just as a vigorous and 
well-dressed woman of thirty-odd swept into the room. She 
was rather smart, bronze-haired, pink-fleshed, not in the least 
nervous or disturbed. 

"You wish to see me?" 

"Yes, ma'am." 

"About what, please?" 

"I am from the Republic," I began. "We have a rather 
startling story about you and Mr. Mooney. It appears that 
his place has been watched and that you " 

"A story about me?" she interrupted with an air of 
hauteur, seeming to have no idea of what I was driving at. 
"And about a Mr. Who? Mooney, you say? What kind of 
a story is it? Why do you come to me about it? Why, I 
don 't even know the man ! ' ' 

' ' Oh, but I think you do, " I replied, thinking of the letter 
and card in my pocket. "As a matter of fact, I know that 
you do. At the office right now we have a card and a letter 
of yours to Mr. Mooney, which the Republic proposes to pub- 
lish along with some other matter unless some satisfactory 
explanation as to why it should not be printed can be made. 
We are conducting a campaign against Mr. Mooney, as you 
probably know." 

I have often thought of this scene as a fine illustration of the 
crass, rough force of life, its queer non-moral tangles, bluster, 
bluff, lies, make-believe. Beginning by accusing me of at- 
tempted blackmail, and adding that she would inform her 
husband and that I must leave the house at once or be 
thrown out, she glared until I replied that I would leave but 
that I had her letter to Mr. Mooney, that there were witnesses 
who would testify as to what had happened between her and 
Mr. Mooney and that unless she proceeded to see my city 
editor at once the whole thing would be written up for the 
next day's paper. Then of a sudden she collapsed. Her face 
blanched, her body trembled, and she, a healthy, vigorous 
woman, dropped to her knees before me, seized my hands and 
coat and began pleading with me in an agonized voice, 



274 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

' ' But you wouldn 't do that ! My husband ! My home ! My 
social position! My children! My God, you wouldn't have 
me driven out of my own home ! If he came here now ! Oh, 
my God, tell me what I am to do ! Tell me that you won't do 
anything — that the Republic won't! I'll give you anything 
you want. Oh, you couldn't be so heartless! Maybe I have 
done wrong — but think of what will happen to me if you do 
this!" 

I stared at her in amazement. Never had I been the center 
of such an astonishing scene. On the instant I felt a mingled 
sense of triumph and extreme pity. Thoughts as to whether 
I should tell the Republic what I knew, whether if I did it 
would have the cruelty to expose this woman, whether she 
would or could be made to pay blackmail by any one raced 
through my mind. I was sorry and yet amused. Always this 
thought of blackmail, of which I heard considerable in news- 
paper work but of which I never had any proof, troubled me. 
If I exposed her, what then? Would Wandell hound her? 
If I did not would he discover that I was suppressing the news 
and so discharge me ? Pity for her was plainly mingled with 
a sense of having achieved another newspaper beat. Now, as- 
suredly, the Republic could make this erratic individual move 
on. To her I proceeded to make plain that I personally was 
helpless, a mere reporter who of himself could do nothing. 
If she wished she could see Mr. "Wandell, who could help her 
if he chose, and I gave her his home address, knowing that 
he would not be at his office at this time of day, but hoping 
to see him myself before she did. Weeping and moaning, 
she raced upstairs, leaving me to make my way out as best I 
might. Once out I meditated on this effrontery and the 
hard, cold work I was capable of doing. Surely this was a 
dreadful thing to have done. Had I the right ? Was it fair ? 
Suppose I had been the victim ? Still I congratulated myself 
upon having done a very clever piece of work for which I 
should be highly complimented. 

The lady must have proceeded at once to my city editor for 
when I returned to the office he was there; he called me to 
him at once, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 275 

1 ' Great God ! "What have you been doing now ? Of all men 
I have ever known, you can get me into more trouble in a 
half -hour than any other man could in a year! Here I was, 
sitting peacefully at home, and up comes my wife telling me 
there's a weeping woman in the parlor who had just driven 
up to see me. Down I go and she grabs my hands, falls 
on her knees and begins telling me about some letters we 
have, that her life will be ruined if we publish them. Do you 
want to get me sued for divorce?" he went on, cackling and 
chortling in his impish way. ' ' What the hell are those letters, 
anyhow? "Where are they? What's this story you've dug 
up now? Who is this woman? You're the damnedest man 
I ever saw!" and he cackled some more. I handed over the 
letter and he proceeded to look it over with considerable 
gusto. As I could see, he was pleased beyond measure. 

I told my story, and he was intensely interested but seemed 
to meditate on its character for some time. Wliat happened 
after that between him and the woman I was never able to 
make out. But one thing is sure : the story was never pub- 
lished, not this incident. An hour or two later, seeing me 
enter the office after my dinner, he called me in and began: 

"You leave this with me now and drop the story for the 
present. There are other ways to get Mooney," and sure 
enough, in a few days Mr. Mooney suddenly left town. It 
was a curious procedure to me, but at least Mr. Mooney was 
soon gone — and 

But figure it out for yourself. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

Two other incidents in connection with my newspaper work 
at this time threw a clear light on social crimes and condi- 
tions which cannot always be discussed or explained. One 
of these related to an old man of about sixty-five years of age 
who was in the coffee and spice business in one of those old 
streets which bordered on the waterfront. One afternoon 
in mid-August, when there was little to do in the way of 
reporting and I was hanging about the office waiting for 
something to turn up, Wandell received a telephone message 
and handed me a slip of paper. "You go down to this address 
and see what you can find out. There's been a fight or some- 
thing. A crowd has been beating up an old man and the police 
have arrested him — to save him, I suppose." 

I took a car and soon reached the scene, a decayed and 
tumbledown region of small family dwellings now turned into 
tenements of even a poorer character. St. Louis had what 
so large a center as New York has not : alleys or rear passage- 
ways to all houses by which trade parcels, waste and the like 
are delivered or removed. And facing these were old barns, 
sheds, and tumbledown warrens of houses and flats occupied 
by poor whites or blacks, or both. In an old decayed and va- 
cant brick barn in one of these alleys there had been only a 
few hours before a furious scene, although when I arrived it 
was all over, everything was still and peaceful. All that I 
could learn was that several hours before an old man had 
been found in this barn with a little girl of eight or nine years. 
The child's parents or friends were informed and a chase 
ensued. The criminal had been surrounded by a group of 
irate citizens who threatened to kill him. Then the police 
arrived and escorted him to the station at North Seventh, 
where supposedly he was locked up. 

On my arrival at the station, however, nothing was known 

276 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 277 

of this case. My noble King knew nothing and when I looked 
on the "blotter," which supposedly contained a public record 
of all arrests and charges made, and which it was my privi- 
lege as well as that of every other newspaper man to look 
over, there was no evidence of any such offense having been 
committed or of any such prisoner having been brought here. 

"What became of that attempted assault in K Street?" 
I inquired of King, who was drowsily reading a newspaper. 
"I was just over there and they told me the man had been 
brought here." 

He looked up at me wearily, seemingly not interested. 
' ' What case ? It must be down if it came in here. What case 
are ye taalkin' about? Maybe it didn't come here." 

I looked at him curiously, struck all at once by an air of 
concealment. He was not as friendly as usual. 

"That's funny," I said. "I've just come from there and 
they told me he was here. It would be on the blotter, wouldn't 
it ? Were you here an hour or two ago ? " 

For the first time since I had been coming here he grew a 
bit truculent. "Sure. If it's not on there it's not on there, 
and that's all I know. If you want to know more than that 
you'll have to see the captain." 

At thought of the police attempting to conceal a thing like 
this in the face of my direct knowledge I grew irritable and 
bold myself. 

"Where's the captain?" I asked. 

"He's out now. He'll be back at four, I think." 

I sat down and waited, then decided to call up the office 
for further instructions. Wandell was in. He advised me 
to call up Edmonstone at the Four Courts and see if it was 
recorded, which I did, but nothing was known. When I re- 
turned I found the captain in. He was a taciturn man and 
had small use for reporters at any time. 

"Yes, yes, yes," he kept reiterating as I asked him about 
the case. "Well, I'll tell you," he said after a long pause, 
seeing that I was determined to know, "he's not here now. 
I let him go. No one saw him commit the crime. He's 
an old man with a big wholesale business in Second Street, 



278 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

never arrested before, and he has a wife and grown sons 
and daughters. Of course he oughtn't to be doin' anything 
of that kind — still, he claims that he wasn't. Anyhow, no 
good can come of writin ' it up in the papers now. Here 's his 
name and address," and he opened a small book which he 
drew out of his pocket and showed me that and no more. 
"Now you can go and talk to him yourself if you want to, 
but if you take my advice you'll let him alone. I see no good 
in pullin' him down if it's goin' to hurt his family. But 
that 's as you newspaper men see it. ' ' 

I could have sympathized with this stocky Irishman more 
if we had not all been suspicious of the police. I decided to 
see this old man myself, curiosity and the desire for a good 
story controlling me. I hurried to a car and rode out to the 
west end, where, in a well-built street and a house of fair 
proportions I found my man sitting on his front porch no 
doubt awaiting some such disastrous onslaught as this and 
anxious to keep it from his family. The moment he saw me 
he walked to his gate and stopped me. He was tall and 
angular, with a grizzled, short, round beard and a dull, unim- 
portant face, a kind of Smith Brothers-coughdrop type. Ap- 
parently he was well into that period where one is supposed 
to settle down into a serene old age and forget all one ever 
knew of youth. I inquired whether a Mr. So-and-So lived 
there, and he replied that he was Mr. So-and-So. 

"I'm from the Republic," I began, "and we have a story 
regarding a charge that has been made against you today 
in one of the police stations." 

He eyed me with a nervous uncertainty that was almost 
tremulous. He did not seem to be able to speak at first but 
chewed on something, a bit of tobacco possibly. 

"Not so loud," he said. "Come out here. I'll give you 
ten dollars if you won't say anything about this," and he 
began to fumble in one of his waistcoat pockets. 

"No, no," I said, with an air of profound virtue. "I can't 
take money for anything like that. I can 't stop anything the 
paper may want to say. You'll have to see the editor." 

All the while I was thinking how like an old fox he was and 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 279 

that if one did have the power to suppress a story of this 
kind here was a fine opportunity for blackmail. He might 
have been made to pay a thousand or more. At the same 
time I could not help sympathizing with him a little, con- 
sidering his age and his unfortunate predicament. Of late I 
had been getting a much clearer light on my own character 
and idiosyncrasies as well as on those of many others, and 
was beginning to see how few there were who could afford 
to cast the stone of righteousness or superior worth. Nearly 
all were secretly doing one thing and another which they 
would publicly denounce and which, if exposed, would cause 
them to be shunned or punished. Sex vagaries were not as 
uncommon as the majority supposed and perhaps were not 
to be given too sharp a punishment if strict justice were to be 
done to all. Yet here was I at this moment yelping at the 
heels of this errant, who had been found out. At the same 
time I cannot say that I was very much moved by the per- 
sonality of the man : he looked to be narrow and close-fisted. 
I wondered how a business man of any acumen could be 
connected with so shabby an affair, or being caught could be so 
dull as to offer any newspaper man so small a sum as ten 
dollars to hush it up. And how about the other papers, the 
other reporters who might hear of it — did he expect to buy 
them all off for ten dollars each? The fact that he had 
admitted the truth of the charges left nothing to say. I felt 
myself grow nervous and incoherent and finally left rather 
discomfited and puzzled as to what I should do. When I 
returned to the office and told "Wandell he seemed to be 
rather dubious also and more or less disgusted. 

"You can't make much out of a case of that kind," he said. 
"We couldn't print it if you did; the public wouldn't stand 
for it. And if you attack the police for concealing it then 
they'll be -down on us. He ought to be exposed, I suppose, 
but — well Write it out and I'll see." 

I therefore wrote it up in a wary and guarded way, telling 
what had happened and how the police had not entered the 
charge, but the story never appeared. Somehow, I was rather 
glad of it, although I thought the man should be punished. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

"While I was on the Globe-Democrat there was a sort of 
race-track tout, gambler, amateur detective and political and 
police hanger-on generally, who was a purveyor of news not 
only to our police and political men but to the sporting and 
other editors, a sort of Jack-of -all-news or tipster. To me he 
was both ridiculous and disgusting, loud, bold, uncouth, the 
kind of creature that begins as bootblack or newsboy and 
winds up as the president of a racing association or ball team. 
He claimed to be Irish, having a freckled face, red hair, gray 
eyes, and rather large hands and feet. In reality he was one 
of those South Russian Jews who looked so much like the 
Irish as to be frequently mistaken for them. He had the wit 
to see that it would be of more advantage to him to be 
thought Irish than Jewish, and so had changed his name of 
Shapirowitz to Galvin — "Red" Galvin. One of the most 
offensive things about him was that his clothes were loud, just 
such clothes as touts and gamblers affect, hard, bright-checked 
suits, bright yellow shoes, ties of the most radiant hues, hats 
of a clashing sonorousness, and rings and pins and cuff-links 
glistening with diamonds or rubies — the kind of man who is 
convinced that clothes and a little money make the man, as 
they quite do in such instances. 

Galvin had the social and moral point of view of both 
the hawk and the buzzard. According to Wood, who early 
made friends with him quite as he did with the Chinese and 
others for purposes of study, he was identified with some 
houses of prostitution in which he had a small financial in- 
terest, as well as various political schemes then being locally 
fostered by one and another group of low politicians wbo 
were constantly getting up one scheme and another to mulct 
the city in some underhanded way. He was a species of 
political and social grafter, having all the high ideals of a 

280 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 281 

bagnio detective: he began to interest Mr. Tobias Mitchell, 
who was a creature of an allied if slightly higher type, and 
the pair became reasonably good friends. Mitchell used him 
as an assistant to Hazard, Bellairs, Bennett, Hartung and 
myself : he supplied the paper with stories which we would re- 
write. I used to laugh at him, more or less to his face, as 
being a freak, which of course generated only the kindliest 
of feelings between us. He always suggested to me the type 
of detective or plain-clothes man who would take money from 
street-girls, prey on them, as indeed I suspected him of doing. 

I wondered how he could make anything out of this news- 
paper connection since, as Hartung and others told me, he 
could not write. It was necessary to rewrite his stuff almost 
entirely. But his great recommendation to Mitchell and 
others was that he could get news of things where other 
reporters could not, among the police, detectives and politi- 
cians, with whom he was evidently hand-in-hand. By reason 
of his underworld connections many amazing details as to one 
form and another of political and social jobbery came to 
light, which doubtless made him invaluable to a city editor. 

When some of his stories were given to me to rewrite we 
were thrown into immediate and clashing contact. Because of 
his leers and bravado, when he knew he could not write two 
good sentences in order, I frequently wanted to brain him but 
took it out in smiles and dry cynical comments. His favorite 
expressions were "See?" and "I sez tuh him" or "He sez tuh 
me, ' ' always accompanied by a contemptuous wave of a hand 
or a pugnaciously protruded chin. One of the chief reasons 
why I hated him was that Dick Wood told me he had once 
remarked that newspaper work was a beggar's game at best 
and that writers grew on trees, meaning that they were so 
numerous as to be negligible and not worth considering. 

I made the best of these trying situations when I had 
to do over a story of his, extracting all the information I 
could and then writing it out, which resulted in some of his 
stories receiving excellent space in the day's news and made 
him all the more pugnacious and sure of himself. And at the 
same time these made him of more value to the paper. How- 



282 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

ever, in due time I left the Globe-Democrat, and one day, 
greatly to my astonishment and irritation, he appeared at the 
North Seventh Street station as a full-fledged reporter, having 
been given a regular position by Mitchell and set to doing 
police work — out of which task at the Four Courts, if I re- 
member rightly, he finally ousted Jock Bellairs, who was 
given to too much drinking. 

To my surprise and chagrin I noticed at once that he was, 
as if by reason of past intimacies of which I had not the 
slightest idea, far more en rapport with the sergeants and 
the captain than I had ever dreamed of being. It was 
"Charlie" here and "Cap" there. But what roiled me most 
was that he gave himself all the airs of a newspaper man, 
swaggering about and talking of this, that and the other story 
he had written (I having done some of them myself!). The 
crowning blow was that he was soon closeted with the captain 
in his room, strolling in and out of that sanctum as if it were 
his private demesne and giving me the impression of being 
in touch with realms and deeds of which I was never to have 
the slightest knowledge. This made me apprehensive lest in 
these intimacies tales and mysteries should be unfolded that 
would have their first light in the pages of the Globe-Democrat 
and so leave me to be laughed at as one who could not get 
the news. I watched the Globe-Democrat more closely than 
ever before for evidence of such treachery on the part of 
the police as would result in a "scoop" for him, at the same 
time redoubling my interest in such items as might appear. 
The consequence was that on more than one occasion I made 
good stories out of things which Mr. Galvin had evidently 
dismissed as worthless ; and now and then a case into which I 
had inquired at the stationhouse appeared in the Globe-Demo- 
crat with details which I had not been able to obtain and 
concerning which the police had insisted they knew nothing. 

For a long time, by dint of energy and a rather plain in- 
dication to all concerned that I would not tolerate false deal- 
ing, I managed not only to hold my own but occasionally to 
give my confrere a good beating — as when, for one instance, 
a negro girl in one of those crowded alleys was cut almost 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 283 

to shreds by an ex-lover armed with a razor, for reasons 
which, as my investigation proved, were highly romantic. 
Some seven or eight months before, this girl and her assailant 
had been living together in Cairo, Illinois, and the lover, 
who was wildly fond of her, became suspicious and finally 
satisfying himself that she was faithless set a trap to catch 
her. He was a coal passer or stevedore, working now on one 
boat and now on another plying the Mississippi between New 
Orleans and St. Louis. And one day when she thought he was 
on a river steamer for a week or two he burst in upon her 
and found her with another man. Death would have been 
her portion, as well as that of her lover, had it not been for 
the interference of friends which permitted the pair to escape. 

The man returned to his task as stevedore, working his 
way from one river city to another. When he came to Mem- 
phis, Natchez, New Orleans, Vicksburg or St. Louis, he dis- 
guised himself as a peddler selling trinkets and charms and in 
this capacity walked the crowded negro sections of these 
cities calling his wares. One of these trips finally brought 
him to St. Louis, and here on a late August afternoon, ambling 
up this stifling little alley calling out his charms and trinkets, 
he had finally encountered her. The girl put her head out of 
the doorway. Dropping his tray he drew a razor and slashed 
her cheeks and lips, arms, legs, back and sides, so that when 
I arrived at the City Hospital she was unconscious and her 
life despaired of. The lover, abandoning his tray of cheap 
jewelry, which was later brought to the stationhouse and 
exhibited, had made good his escape and was not captured, 
during my stay in St. Louis at least. Her present paramour 
had also gone his way, leaving her to suffer alone. 

Owing possibly to Galvin's underestimate of its romance, 
this story received only a scant stick as a low dive cutting 
affray in the Globe-Democrat, while in the Republic I had 
turned it into a negro romance which filled all of a column. 
Into it I had tried to put the hot river waterfronts of the 
different cities which the lover had visited, the crowded negro 
quarters of Memphis, New Orleans, Cairo, the bold negro 
life which two truants such as the false mistress and her 



284 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

lover might enjoy. I had tried to suggest the sing-song 
sleepiness of the levee boat-landings, the stevedores at their 
lazy labors, the idle, dreamy character of the slow-moving 
boats. Even an old negro refrain appropriate to a trinket 
peddler had been introduced: 

"Eyah — Rings, Pins, Buckles, Ribbons!" 

The barbaric character of the alley in which it occurred, 
lined with rickety curtain-hung shacks and swarming with 
the idle, crooning, shuffling negro life of the South, appealed 
to me. An old black mammy with a yellow-dotted kerchief 
over her head, who kept talking of "disha Gawge" and 
"disha Sam" and "disha Maquatia" (the girl), moved me 
to a poetic frenzy. From a crowd of blacks that hung about 
the vacated shack of the lovers after the girl had been taken 
away I picked up the main thread of the story, the varying 
characteristics of the girl and her lover, and then having 
visited the hospital and seen the victim I hurried to the 
office and endeavored to convince Wandell that I had an 
important story. At first he was not inclined to think so, 
negro life being a little too low for local consumption, but 
after I had entered upon some of the details he told me to go 
ahead. I wrote it out as well as I could, and it went in on 
the second page. The next day, meeting Galvin, having first 
examined the Globe to see what had been done there, I beamed 
on him cheerfully and was met with a snarl of rage. 

"You think you're a hell of a feller, dontcha, because 
yuh can sling a little ink? Yuh think yuh've pulled off 
sompin swell. Well, say, yuh 're not near as much as yuh 
think yuh are. Wait an' see. I've been up against wordy 
boys like yuh before, an' I can work all around 'em. All 
you guys do is to get a few facts an' then pad 'em up. Yuh 
never get the real stuff, never," and he snapped his fingers 
tinder my nose. "Wait '11 we get a real case sometime, you 
an ' me, an ' I '11 show yuh sompin. ' ' 

He glared at me with hard, revengeful eyes, and he then 
and there put a fear into me from which I never recovered, 
although at the time I merely smiled. 

"Is that so? That's easy enough to say, now that you're 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 285 

trimmed, but I guess I'll be right there when the time 
comes. ' ' 

' ' Aw, go to hell ! " he snarled, and I walked off smiling but 
beginning to wonder nervously just what it was he was going 
to do to me, and how soon. 



CHAPTER XLV 

Some time before this (when I was still working for the 
Globe-Democrat) , there had occurred on the Missouri Pacific, 
about one hundred and fifty miles west of St. Louis a hold-up, 
the story of which interested me, although I had nothing 
to do with it. According to the reports, seven lusty and 
daring bandits, all heavily armed and desperate, had held up 
an eight-car Pullman and baggage express train between one 
and two of the morning at a lonely spot, and after overawing 
the passengers, had compelled the engineer and fireman to dis- 
mount, uncouple the engine and run it a hundred paces ahead, 
then return and help break open the door of the express 
car. This they did, using a stick of dynamite or giant powder 
handed them by one of the bandits. And then both were 
made to enter the express car, where, under the eye of one of 
the bandits and despite the presence of the express messenger, 
who was armed yet overawed, they were compelled to blow 
open the safe and carry forth between twenty and thirty thou- 
sand dollars in bills and coin, which they deposited on the 
ground in sacks and packages for the bandits. Then, if you 
please, they were compelled to re-enter their engine, back it 
up and couple it to the train and proceed upon their journey, 
leaving the bandits to gather up their booty and depart. 

Naturally such a story was of great interest to St. Louis, 
as well as to all the other cities near at hand. It smacked 
of the lawlessness of the 'forties. All banks, express com- 
panies, railroads and financial institutions generally were 
intensely interested. The whole front page was given to 
this deed, and it was worth it, although during my short 
career in journalism in this region no less than a dozen amaz- 
ing train robberies took place in as many months in the region 
bounded by the Mississippi and the Rockies, the Canadian 

286 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 287 

line and the Gulf. Four or five of them occurred within a 
hundred miles of St. Louis. 

The truth about this particular robbery was that there had 
not been seven bandits but just one, an ex-railroad hand, 
turned robber for this occasion only, and armed, as subse- 
quent developments proved, with but a brace of revolvers, each 
containing six shots, and a few sticks of fuse-prepared giant 
powder ! Despite the glowing newspaper account which made 
of this a most desperate and murderous affair, there had 
been no prowling up and down the aisles of the cars by 
bandits armed to the teeth, as a number of passengers insisted 
(among whom was the Governor of the State, his Lieutenant- 
Governor, several officers of his staff, all returning from a 
military banquet or feast somewhere). Nor was there any 
shooting at passengers who ventured to peer out into the dark- 
ness. Just this one lone bandit, who was very busy up in the 
front attending to the robbing. "What made this story all the 
more ridiculous in the light of later developments was that 
at the time the train stopped in the darkness and the ima- 
ginary bandits began to shout and fire shots, and even to rob 
the passengers of their watches, pins, purses, these worthies 
of the State, or so it was claimed in guffawing newspaper cir- 
cles afterward, crawled under their seats or into their berths 
and did not emerge until the train was well on its way once 
more. Long before the true story of the lone bandit came 
out, the presence of the Governor and his staff was well 
known and had lent luster to the deed and strengthened the 
interest which later attached to the story of the real bandit. 

The St. Louis newspaper files for 1893 will show whether 
or not I am correct. This lone bandit, as it was later indis- 
putably proved, was nothing more than an ex-farm hand 
turned railroad hand and then "baggage-smasher" at a small 
station. Owing to love and poverty he had plotted this as- 
tounding coup, which, once all its details were revealed, fas- 
cinated the American public from coast to coast. That a lone 
individual should undertake such an astounding task was 
uppermost in everybody's mind, including that of our city 



288 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

editors, and to the task of unraveling it they now bent their 
every effort. 

"When the robbery occurred I was working for the Globe- 
D&mocrat; later, when it was discovered by detectives working 
for the railroad and the express company who the star robber 
was, I was connected with the Republic. Early one after- 
noon I was shown a telegram from some backwoods town in 
Missouri — let us say Bald Knob, just for a name's sake — 
that Lem Eollins (that name will do as well as any other), 
an ex-employee of the Missouri Pacific, had been arrested 
by detectives for the road and express company for the 
crime, and that upon searching his room they had found most 
of the stolen money. Also, because of other facts with which 
he had been confronted he had confessed that he and he 
alone had been guilty of the express robbery. The dispatch 
added that he had shown the detectives where the remainder 
of the money lay hidden, and that this very afternoon he 
would be en route to St. Louis, scheduled to arrive over the 
St. Louis & San Francisco, and that he would be confined 
in the county jail here. Imagine the excitement. The bur- 
glar had not told how he had accomplished this great feat, 
and here he was now en route to St. Louis, and might be met 
and interviewed on the train. From a news point of view 
the story was immense. 

When I came in Wandell exclaimed: "I'll tell you what 
you do, Dreiser — Lord ! I thought you wouldn't come back in 
time ! Here 's a St. Louis & San Francisco time-table ; accord- 
ing to it you can take a local that leaves here at two-fifteen 
and get as far as this place, Pacific, where the incoming ex- 
press stops. It's just possible that the Globe and the other 
papers haven't got hold of this yet — maybe they have, but 
whatever happens, we won't get licked, and that's the main 
thing." 

I hurried down to the Union Station, but when I asked for 
a ticket to Pacific, the ticket agent asked "Which road?" 

"Are there two?" 

' ' Sure, Missouri Pacific, and St. Louis & San Francisco. ' ' 

"They both go to the same place, do they?" 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 289 

"Yes; they meet there." 

"Which train leaves first?" 

"St. Louis & San Francisco. It's waiting now." 

I hurried to it, but the thought of this other road in from 
Pacific troubled me. Suppose the bandit should be on the 
other train instead of on this ! I consulted with the conductor 
when he came for my ticket and was told that Pacific was the 
only place at which these two roads met, one going west and 
the other southwest from there. ' ' Good, ' ' I thought. ' ' Then 
he is certain to be on this line. ' ' 

But now another thought came to me : supposing reporters 
from other papers were aboard, especially the Globe-Demo- 
crat! I rose and walked forward to the smoker, and there, 
to my great disgust and nervous dissatisfaction, was Galvin, 
red-headed, serene, a cigar between his teeth, slumped low in 
his seat smoking and reading a paper as calmly as though 
he were bent upon the most unimportant task in the world. 

"How now?" I asked myself. "The Globe has sent that 
swine ! Here he is, and these country detectives and railroad 
men will be sure, on the instant, to make friends with him 
and do their best to serve him. They like that sort of man. 
They may even give him details which they will refuse to 
give me. I shall have to interview my man in front of him, 
and he will get the benefit of all my questions ! At his request 
they may even refuse to let me interview him ! ' ' 

I returned to my seat nervous and much troubled, all the 
more so because I now recalled Galvin 's threat. But I was 
determined to give him the tussle of his life. Now we would 
see whether he could beat me or not — not, if fair play were 
exercised; of that I felt confident. Why, he could not even 
write a decent line! Why should I be afraid of him? . . . 
But I was, just the same. 

As the dreary local drew near Pacific I became more and 
more nervous. When we drew up at the platform I jumped 
down, all alive with the determination not to be outdone. I 
saw Galvin leap out, and on the instant he spied me. I 
never saw a face change more quickly from an expression of 
ease and assurance to one of bristling opposition and distrust. 



290 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

How he hated me. He looked about to see who else might 
dismount, then, seeing no one, he bustled up to the station- 
agent to see when the train from the west was due. I de- 
cided not to trail, and sought information from the conductor, 
who assured me that the eastbound express would probably 
be on time, five minutes later. 

"It always stops here, does it?" I inquired anxiously. 

"It always stops." 

As we talked Galvin came back to the platform and stood 
looking up the track. Our train now pulled out, and a few 
minutes later the whistle of the express was heard. Now for 
a real contest, I thought. Somewhere in one of those cars 
would be the bandit surrounded by detectives, and my duty 
was to get to him first, to explain who I was and begin my 
questioning, overawing Galvin perhaps with the ease with 
which I should take charge. Maybe the bandit would not 
want to talk ; if so I must make him, cajole him or his captors, 
or both. No doubt, since I was the better interviewer, or so 
I thought, I should have to do all the talking, and this wretch 
would make notes or make a deal with the detectives while I 
was talking. In a few moments the train was rolling into the 
station, and then I saw my friend Galvin leap aboard and 
with that iron effrontery and savageness which I always nated 
in him, begin to race through the cars. I was about to follow 
him when I saw the conductor stepping down beside me. 

"Is that train-robber they are bringing in from Bald Knob 
on here ? I 'm from the Republic, and I 've been sent out here 
to interview him." 

"You're on the wrong road, brother," he smiled. "He's 
not on here. They're bringing him in over the Missouri 
Pacific. They took him across from Bald Knob to Denton 
and caught the train there — but I'll tell you," and he con- 
sulted his watch, ' ' you might be able to catch that yet if you 
run for it. It's only across the field here. You see that little 
yellow station over there? Well, that's the Missouri Pacific 
depot. I don 't know whether it stops here or not, but it may. 
It's due now, but sometimes it's a little late. You'll have to 
run for it though ; you haven 't a minute to spare. ' ' 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 291 

"You wouldn't fool me about a thing like this, would you?" 
I pleaded. 

"Not for anything. I know how you feel. If you can get 
on that train you'll find him, unless they've taken him off 
somewhere else." 

I don't remember if I even stopped to thank him. Instead 
of following Garvin into the cars I now leaped to the little 
path which cut diagonally across this long field, evidently well 
worn by human feet. As I ran I looked back once or twice 
to see if my enemy was following me, but apparently he 
had not seen me. I now looked forward eagerly toward this 
other station, but, as I ran, I saw the semaphore arm, which 
stood at right angles opposite the station, lower for a clear 
track for some train. At the same time I spied a mail-bag 
hanging out on an express arm, indicating that whatever this 
train was it was not going to stop here. I turned, still un- 
certain as to whether I had made a mistake in not searching 
the other train after all. Supposing the conductor had fooled 
me. . . . Supposing the burglar were on there, and Galvin was 
already beginning to question him ! Oh, Lord, what a beat ! 
And what would happen to me then? Was it another case 
of three shows and no critic? I slowed up in my running, 
chill beads of sweat bursting through my pores, but as I did 
so I saw the St. Louis & San Francisco train begin to move 
and from it, as if shot out of it, leaped Garvin. 

"Ha!" I thought. "Then the robber is not on there! 
Galvin has just discovered it! He knows now that he is 
coming in on this line" — for I could see him running along 
the path. "Oh, kind Heaven, if I can beat him to it! If I 
can only get on and leave him behind ! He has all of a thou- 
sand feet still to run, and I am here!" 

Desperately I ran into the station, thrust my head in at the 
open office window and called: 

"When is this St. Louis express due here?" 

"Now," he replied surlily. 

"Does it stop?" 

"No, it don't stop." 

"Can it be stopped?" 



292 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

''It can not!" 

"You mean that you have no right to stop it!" 

' ' I mean I won 't stop it ! " 

Even as he said this there came the shriek of a whistle in 
the distance. 

"Oh, Lord," I thought. "Here it comes, and he won't 
let me on, and Galvin will be here any minute ! ' ' For the 
moment I was even willing that Galvin should catch it too, 
if only I could get on. Think of what Wandell would think 
if I missed it! 

"Will five dollars stop it?" I asked desperately, diving 
into my pocket. 

"No." 

"Will ten?" 

"It might," he replied crustily. 

' ' Stop it, " I urged and handed over the bill. 

The agent took it, grabbed a tablet of yellow order blanks 
which lay before him, scribbled something on the face of 
one and ran out to the track. At the same time he called to 
me: 

"Run on down the track. Run after it. She won't stop 
here. She can't. Run on. She'll go a thousand feet before 
she can slow up." 

I ran, while he stood there holding up this thin sheet of 
yellow paper. As I ran I heard the express rushing up be- 
hind me. On the instant it was alongside and past, its 
wheels grinding and emitting sparks. It was stopping! I 
should get on, and oh, glory be ! Galvin would not ! Fine ! 
I could hear the gritty screech of the wheels against the brakes 
as the train came to a full stop. Now I would make it, and 
what a victory! I came up to it and climbed aboard, but, 
looking back, I saw to my horror that my rival had almost 
caught up and was now close at hand, not a hundred feet 
behind. He had seen the signal, had seen me running, and 
instead of running to the station had taken a diagonal tack 
and followed me. I saw that he would make the train. I 
tried to signal the agent behind to let the train go, but he 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 293 

had already done so. The conductor came out on the rear 
platform and I appealed to him. 

"Let her go!" I pleaded. "Let her go! It's all right! 
Go on!" 

"Don't that other fellow want to get on too?" he asked 
curiously. 

"No, no, no! Don't let him on!" I pleaded. "I arranged 
to stop this train! I'm from the Republic! He's nobody! 
He's no right on here!" But even as I spoke up came 
Galvin, breathless and perspiring, and crawled eagerly on, a 
leer of mingled triumph and joy at my discomfiture written 
all over his face. If I had had more courage I would have 
beaten him off. As it was, I merely groaned. To think that 
I should have done all this for him ! 

"Is that so?" he sneered. "You think you'll leave me 
behind, do you? "Well, I fooled you this trip, didn't I?" and 
his lip curled. 

I was beaten. It was an immensely painful moment for 
me, to lose when I had everything in my own hands. My 
spirits fell so for the moment that I did not even trouble to 
inquire whether the robber was on the train. I ambled in 
after my rival, who had proceeded on his eager way, satis- 
fied that I should have to beat him in the quality of the 
interview. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

Following Galvin forward through the train, I soon dis- 
covered the detectives and their prisoner in one of the for- 
ward cars. The prisoner was a most unpromising specimen 
for so unique a deed, short, broad-shouldered, heavy-limbed, 
with a squarish, unexpressive, dull face, blue-gray eyes, dark 
brown hair, big, lumpy, rough hands — just the hands one 
would expect to find on a railroad or baggage smasher — and a 
tanned and seamed skin. He had on the cheap nondescript 
clothes of a laborer ; a blue hickory shirt, blackish-gray trou- 
sers, brown coat and a red bandanna handkerchief tied about 
his neck. On his head was a small round brown hat, pulled 
down over his eyes. He had the still, indifferent expression 
of a captive bird, and when I came up after Galvin and sat 
down he scarcely looked at me or at Galvin. 

Between him and the car window, to foil any attempt at 
escape in that direction, and fastened to him by a pair of 
handcuffs, was the sheriff of the county in which he had 
been taken, a big, bland, inexperienced creature whose sense 
of his own importance was plainly enhanced by his task. 
Facing him was one of the detectives of the road or express 
company, a short, canny, vulture-like person, and opposite 
them, across the aisle, sat still another ' ' detective. " There 
may have been still others, but I failed to inquire. I was 
so incensed at the mere presence of Galvin and his cheap and 
coarse methods of ingratiating himself into any company, 
and especially one like this, that I could scarcely speak. 
"What!" I thought. "When the utmost finesse would be 
required to get the true inwardness of all this, to send a 
cheap pig like this to thrust himself forward and muddle 
what might otherwise prove a fine story ! Why, if it hadn 't 
been for me and my luck and my money, he wouldn 't be here 

294 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 295 

at all. And he was posing as a reporter — the best man of the 
Globe!" 

He had the detective-politician-gambler's habit of simulat- 
ing an intense interest and enthusiasm which he did not feel, 
his face wreathing itself into a cheery smile the while his eyes 
followed one like those of a basilisk, attempting all the while 
to discover whether his assumed friendship was being ac- 
cepted at the value he wished. 

"Gee, sport," he began familiarly in my presence, patting 
the burglar on the knee and fixing him with that basilisk 
gaze, "that was a great trick you pulled off. The papers '11 
be crazy to find out how you did it. My paper, the Globe- 
Democrat, wants a whole page of it. It wants your picture 
too. Did you really do it all alone? Gee! Well, that's 
what I call swell work, eh, Cap?" and now he turned his 
ingratiating leer on the county sheriff and the other detec- 
tives. In a moment or two more he was telling the latter what 
an intimate friend he was of "Billy" Desmond, the chief of 
detectives of St. Louis, and Mr. So-and-So, the chief of police, 
as well as various other detectives and policemen. 

"The dull stuff!" I thought. "And this is what he con- 
siders place in this world! And he wants a whole page 
for the Globe! He'd do well if he wrote a paragraph alone ! " 

Still, to my intense chagrin, I could see that he was making 
headway, not only with the sheriff and the detectives but 
with the burglar himself. The latter smiled a raw, wry smile 
and looked at him as if he might possibly understand such a 
person. Galvin's good clothes, always looking like new, his 
bright yellow shoes, sparkling rings and pins and gaudy tie, 
seemed to impress them all. So this was the sort of thing these 
people liked — and they took him for a real newspaper man 
from a great newspaper ! 

Indeed the only time that I seemed to obtain the least grip 
on this situation or to impress myself on the minds of the 
prisoner and his captors, was when it came to those finer 
shades of questioning which concerned just why, for what 
ulterior reasons, he had attempted this deed alone ; and then 
I noticed that my confrere was all ears and making copious 



296 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

notes. He knew enough to take from others what he could 
not work out for himself. In regard to the principal or gen- 
eral points, I found that my Irish- Jewish friend was as 
swift at ferreting out facts as any one, and as eager to know 
how and why. And always, to my astonishment and cha- 
grin, the prisoner as well as the detectives paid more attention 
to him than to me. They turned to him as to a lamp and 
seemed to be immensely more impressed with him than with 
me, although the main lines of questioning fell to me. All at 
once I found him whispering to one or other of the detectives 
while I was developing some thought, but when I turned 
up anything new, or asked a question he had not thought of, 
he was all ears again and back to resume the questioning on 
his own account. In truth, he irritated me frightfully, and 
appeared to be intensely happy in doing so. My contemptuous 
looks and remarks did not disturb him in the least. By now 
I was so dour and enraged that I could think of but one thing 
that would have really satisfied me, and that was to attack 
him physically and give him a good beating — although I seri- 
ously questioned whether I could do that, he was so conten- 
tious, cynical and savage. 

However the story was finally extracted, and a fine tale it 
made. It appeared that up to seven or eight months pre- 
ceding the robbery, this robber had been first a freight 
brakeman or yard hand on this road, later being promoted to 
the position of superior switchman and assistant freight 
handler. Previous to this he had been a livery stable helper 
in the town in which he was eventually taken, and before 
that a farm hand in that neighborhood. About a year before 
the crime this road, along with many others, had laid off a 
large number of men, including himself, and reduced the 
wages of all others by as much as ten per cent. Naturally 
a great deal of labor discontent ensued. A number of train 
robberies, charged and traced to dismissed and dissatisfied 
ex-employees, now followed. The methods of successful train 
robbing were so clearly set forth by the newspapers that 
nearly any one so inclined could follow them. Among other 
things, while working as a freight handler, Lem Eollins had 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 297 

heard of the many money shipments made by the express 
companies and the manner in which they were guarded. The 
Missouri Pacific, for which he worked, was a very popular 
route for money shipments, both West and East, bullion and 
bills being in transit all the while between St. Louis and 
the East, and Kansas City and the West, and although ex- 
press messengers even at this time, owing to numerous train 
robberies which had been occurring in the West lately were 
always well armed, still these assaults had not been without 
success. The death of firemen, engineers, messengers, con- 
ductors and even passengers who ventured to protest, as well 
as the fact that much money had recently been stolen and 
never recovered, had not only encouraged the growth of ban- 
ditry everywhere but had put such an unreasoning fear into 
most employees of the road as well as its passengers, who 
had no occasion for risking their lives in defense of the roads, 
that but few even of those especially picked guards ventured 
to give the marauders battle. I myself during the short time 
I had been in St. Louis had helped report three such robberies 
in its immdiate vicinity, in all of which cases the bandits had 
escaped unharmed. 

But the motives which eventually resulted in the amazing 
single-handed attempt of this particular robber were not so 
much that he was a discharged and poor railroad hand unable 
to find any other form of employment as that in his idleness, 
having wandered back to his native region, he had fallen in 
love with a young girl. Here, being hard pressed for cash and 
unable to make her such presents as he desired, he had first 
begun to think seriously of some method of raising money, 
and later, another ex-railroad hand showing up and proposing 
to rob a train, he had at first rejected it as not feasible, not 
wishing to tie himself up in a crime, especially with others; 
still later, his condition becoming more pressing, he had 
begun to think of robbing a train on his own account. 

Why alone — that was the point we were all most anxious 
to find out — singlehanded, and with all the odds against him ? 
Neither Galvin nor myself could induce him to make this 
point clear, although, once I raised it, we were both most 



298 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

eager to solve it. "Didn't he know that he could not expect 
to overcome engineer and fireman, baggage-man and mail- 
man, to say nothing of the express messenger, the conductor 
and the passengers?" 

Yes, he knew, only he had thought he could do it. Other 
bandits (so few as three in one case of which he had read) 
had held up large trains ; why not one ? Revolver shots fired 
about a train easily overawed all passengers, as well as the 
trainmen apparently. It was a life and death job either way, 
and it would be better for him if he worked it out alone instead 
of with others. Often, he said, other men ' ' squealed ' ' or they 
had girls who told on them. I looked at him, intensely in- 
terested and moved to admiration by the sheer animal courage 
of it all, the "gall," the grit, or what you will, imbedded 
somewhere in this stocky frame. 

And how came he to fix on this particular train? I asked. 
"Well, it was this way: Every Thursday and Friday a 
limited running west at midnight carried larger shipments of 
money than on other days. This was due to exchanges being 
made between Eastern and "Western banks; but he did not 
know that. Having decided on one of these trains, he pro- 
ceeded by degrees to secure first a small handbag, from which 
he had scraped all evidence of the maker's name, then later, 
from other distant places, so as to avoid all chance of detec- 
tion, six or seven fused sticks of giant powder such as 
farmers use to blow up stumps, and still later, two revolvers 
holding six cartridges each, some cartridges, and cord and 
cloth out of which he proposed to make bundles of the money. 
Placing all this in his bag, he eventually visited a small town 
nearest the spot which, because of its loneliness, he had fixed 
on as the ideal place for his crime, and then, reconnoitering 
it and its possibilities, finally arranged all his plans to a 
nicety. 

Here, as he now told us, just at the outskirts of this hamlet, 
stood a large water-tank at which this express as well as nearly 
all other trains stopped for water. Beyond it, about five miles, 
was a wood with a marsh somewhere in its depths, an ideal 
place to bury his booty quickly. The express was due at 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 299 

this tank at about one in the morning. The nearest town 
beyond the wood was all of five miles away, a mere hamlet 
like this one. His plan was to conceal himself near this 
tank and when the train stopped, and just before it started 
again, to slip in between the engine tender and the front 
baggage car, which was "blind" at both ends. Another ar- 
rangement, carefully executed beforehand, was to take his 
handbag (without the revolvers and sticks of giant powder, 
which he would carry), and place it along the track just op- 
posite that point in the wood where he wished the train to 
stop. Here, once he had concealed himself between the engine 
and the baggage car, and the train having resumed its jour- 
ney, he would keep watch until the headlight of the engine 
revealed this bag lying beside the track, when he would rise 
up and compel the engineer to stop the train. So far, so 
good. 

However, as it turned out, two slight errors, one of for- 
getfulness and one of eyesight, caused him finally to lose 
the fruit of his plan. On the night in question, between eight 
and nine, he arrived on the scene of action and did as he had 
planned. He put the bag in place and boarded the train. 
However, on reaching the spot where he felt sure the bag 
should be, he could not see it. Realizing that he was where 
he wished to work he rose up, covered the two men in the 
cab, drove them before him to the rear of the engine, where 
under duress they were made to uncouple it, then conducted 
them to the express car door, where he presented them with a 
stick of giant powder and .ordered them to blow it open. 
This they did, the messenger within having first refused so to 
do. They were driven into the car and made to 'blow open 
the safe, throwing out the packages of bills and coin as he 
commanded. But during this time, realizing the danger of 
either trainmen or passengers climbing down from the cars in 
the rear and coming forward, he had fired a few shots toward 
the passenger coaches, calling to imaginary companions to 
keep watch there. At the same time, to throw the fear of 
death into the minds of both engineer and fireman, he pre- 



300 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

tended to be calling to imaginary confreres on the other side 
of the train to ' ' keep watch over there. ' ' 

' ' Don 't kill anybody unless you have to, boys, ' ' he had said, 
or "That'll be all right, Frank. Stay over there. "Watch 
that side. I'll take care of these two." And then he would 
fire a few more shots. 

Once the express car door and safe had been blown open 
and the money handed out, he had compelled the engineer 
and fireman to come down, recouple the engine, and pull 
away. Only after the train had safely disappeared did he ven- 
ture to gather up the various packages, rolling them in his 
coat, since he had lost his bag, and with this over his shoulder 
he had staggered off into the night, eventually succeeding 
in concealing it in the swamp, and then making off for safety 
himself. 

The two things which finally caused his discovery were, 
first, the loss of the bag, which, after concealing the money, 
he attempted to find but without success; and, second (and 
this he did not even know at the time), that in the bag which 
he had lost he had placed some time before and then forgotten 
apparently a small handkerchief containing the initials of 
his love in one corner. Why he might have wished to carry 
the handkerchief about with him was understandable enough, 
but why he should have put it into the bag and then forgot 
it was not clear, even to himself. From the detectives we 
now learned that the next day at noon the bag was found by 
other detectives and citizens just where he had placed it, and 
that the handkerchief had given them their first clue. The 
wood was searched, without success however, save that foot- 
prints were discovered in various places and measured. 
Again, experts meditating on the crime decided that, owing to 
the hard times and the laying-off and discharging of em- 
ployees, some of these might have had a hand in it; and so 
in due time the whereabouts and movements of each and 
every one of those who had worked for the road were gone 
into. It was finally discovered that this particular ex-helper 
had returned to his native town and had been going with a 
certain girl, and was about to be married to her. Next, it 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 301 

was discovered that her initials corresponded to those on 
the handkerchief. Presto, Mr. Rollins was arrested, a search 
of his room made, and nearly all of the money recovered. 
Then, being "caught with the goods," he confessed, and here 
he was being hurried to St. Louis to be jailed and sentenced, 
while we harpies of the press and the law were gathered about 
him to make capital of his error. 

The only thing that consoled me, however, as I rode toward 
St. Louis and tried to piece the details of his crime together, 
was that if I had failed to make it impossible for Galvin 
to get the story at all, still, when it came to the narration of 
it, I should unquestionably write a better story, for he would 
have to tell his story to some one else, while I should be able 
to write my own, putting in such touches as I chose. Only 
one detail remained to be arranged for, and that was the 
matter of a picture. "Why neither Wandell nor myself, nor 
the editor of the Globe, had thought to include an artist on 
this expedition was more a fault of the time than anything 
else, illustrations for news stories being by no means as nu- 
merous as they are today, and the peripatetic photographer 
having not yet been invented. As we neared St, Louis Galvin 
began to see the import of this very clearly, and suddenly 
began to comment on it, saying he "guessed" we'd have to 
send to the Four Courts afterward and have one made. Sud- 
denly his eyes filled with a shrewd cunning, and he turned to 
me and said : 

"How would it be, old man, if we took him up to the 
Globe office and let the boys make a picture of him — your 
friends, "Wood and McCord? Then both of us could get one 
right away. I'd say take him to the Republic, only the Globe 
is so much nearer, and we have that new flashlight machine, 
you know" (which was true, the Republic being very poorly 
equipped in this respect). He added a friendly aside to the 
effect that of course this depended on whether the prisoner 
and the officers in charge were willing. 

"Not on your life," I replied suspiciously and resentfully, 
"not to the Globe, anyhow. If you want to bring him down 



302 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to the Republic, all right; we'll have them make pictures and 
you can have one. ' ' 

"But why not the Globe?" he went on. "Wood and Mc- 
Cord are your friends more'n they are mine. Think of the 
difference in the distance. We want to save time, don't we? 
Here it is nearly six-thirty, and by the time we get down there 
and have a picture taken and I get back to the office it'll 
be half past seven or eight. It 's all right for you, I suppose, 
because you can write faster, but look at me. I'd just as lief 
go down there as not, but what's the difference? Besides, the 
Globe's got a much better plant, and you know it. Either 
Wood or McCord'll make a fine picture, and when we explain 
to 'em how it is you'll be sure to get one, the same as us — 
just the same picture. Ain't that all right?" 

"No it's not," I replied truculently, "and I won't do it, 
that's all. It's all right about Dick and Peter — I know what 
they'll do for me if the paper will let them, but I know the 
paper won't let them, and besides, you're not going to be able 
to claim in the morning that this man was brought to the 
Globe first. I know you. Don't begin to try to put anything 
over .on me, because I won 't stand for it, see ? And if these 
people do it anyhow I'll make a kick at headquarters, that's 
all." 

For a moment he appeared to be quieted by this and to 
decide to abandon his project, but later he took it up again, 
seemingly in the most conciliatory spirit in the world. At 
the same time, and from now on, he kept boring me with 
his eyes, a "thing which I had never known him to do before. 
He was always too hang-dog in looking at me; but now of a 
sudden there was something bold and friendly as well as 
tolerant and cynical in his gaze. 

"Aw, come on," he argued. He was amazingly aggressive. 
"What's the use being small about it? The Globe's nearer. 
Think what a fine picture it'll make. If you don't we'll, 
have to go clear to the office and send an artist down to the 
jail. You can't take any good pictures down there tonight." 

"Cut it," I replied. "I won't do it, that's all," but even 
as he talked a strange feeling of uncertainty or confusion 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 303 

began to creep over me. For the first time since knowing 
him, in spite of all my opposition of this afternoon and before, 
I found myself not quite hating him but feeling as though 
he weren't such an utterly bad sort after all. "What was so 
wrong about this Globe idea anyhow, I began suddenly to 
ask myself, in the most insane and yet dreamy way imagin- 
able. Why wouldn't it be all right to do that? Inwardly 
or downwardly, or somewhere within me, something was 
telling me that it was all wrong and that I was making a big 
mistake even to think about it. I felt half asleep or sur- 
rounded by clouds which made everything he said seem 
all right. Still, I wasn't asleep, and now I didn't believe 
a word he said, but 

"To the Globe, sure," I found myself saying to myself in 
spite of myself, in a dumb, half -numb way. ' ' That wouldn 't 
be so bad. It's nearer. "What's wrong with that? Dick or 
Peter will make a good picture, and then I can take it along, ' ' 
only at the same time I was also thinking, ' ' I shouldn 't really 
do that. He'll claim the credit for having brought this man 
to the Globe office. I'll be making a big mistake. The Repub- 
lic or nothing. Let him come down to the Republic." 

In the meantime we were entering St. Louis and the sta- 
tion. By then, somehow, he had not only convinced the 
sheriff and the other officers, but the prisoner. They liked him 
and were willing to do what he said. I could even see the 
rural love of show and parade gleaming in the eyes of the 
sheriff and the two detectives. Plainly, the office of the 
Globe was the great place in their estimation for such an 
exhibition. At the same time, between looking at me and 
the prisoner and the officers, he had knitted a fine mental net 
from which I seemed unable to escape. Even as I rose with 
these others to leave the train I cried: "No, I won't come in 
on this! It's all right if you want to bring him down to 
the Republic, or you can take him to the Four Courts, but 
I'm not going to let you get away with this. You hear now, 
don't you?" But then it was too late. 

Once outside, Galvin laid hold of my arm in an amazingly 
genial fashion and hung on it. In spite of me, he seemed to 



304 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

be master of the situation and to realize it. Once more lie 
began to plead, and getting in front of me he seemed to do his 
best to keep my optical attention. From that point on and 
from that day to this, I have never been able to explain to 
myself what did happen. All at once, and much more clearly 
than before, I seemed to see that his plan in regard to the 
Globe was the best. It would save time, and besides, he kept 
repeating in an almost sing-song way that we would go first 
to the Globe and then to the Republic. "You come up with 
me to the Globe, and then I'll go down with you to the Re- 
public/' he kept saying. "We'll just let Wood or McCord 
take one picture, and then we'll all go down to your place — 
see?" 

Although I didn 't see I went. For the time, nothing seemed 
important. If he had stayed by me I think he could have 
prevented my writing any story at all. As it was he was so 
eager to achieve this splendid triumph of introducing the 
celebrated bandit into the editorial rooms of the Globe first 
and there having him photographed and introduced to my old 
chief, that he hailed a carriage, and, the six of us crowding 
into it, we were bustled off in a trice to the door of the 
Globe, where, once I reached it, and seeing him and the 
detectives and the bandit hurrying across the sidewalk, I 
suddenly awoke to the asininity of it all. 

"Wait!" I called. "Say, hold on! Cut this! I won't 
do it! I don't agree to this!" but it was too late. In a trice 
the prisoner and the rest of them were up the two or three 
low steps of the main entrance and into the hall, and I was 
left outside to meditate on the insanity of the thing I had 
done. 

"Great God!" I suddenly exclaimed to myself. "What 
have I let that fellow do to me ? I 've been hypnotized, that 's 
what it is ! I 've allowed him to take a prisoner whom I had 
in my own hands at one time into the office of our great 
rival to be photographed! He's put it all over me on this 
job — and I had him beaten! I had him where I could have 
shoved him off the train — and now I let him do this to me, 
and tomorrow there'll be a long editorial in the Globe telling 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF , 305 

how this fellow was brought there first and photographed, and 
his picture to prove it!" I swore and groaned for blocks 
as I walked towards the Republic, wondering what I should 
do. 

Distinct as was my failure, it was so easy, even when prac- 
tically admitting the whole truth, to make it seem as though 
the police had deliberately worked against the Republic. I 
did not even have to do that but merely recited my protests, 
without admitting or insisting upon hypnotism, which Wan- 
dell would not have believed anyhow. On the instant he 
burst into a great rage against the police department, seeing 
apparently no fault in anything I had done, and vowing 
vengeance. They were always doing this; they did it to the 
Republic when he was on the Globe. "Wait — he would get 
even with them yet ! Eushing a photographer to the jail, 
he had various pictures made, all of which appeared with my 
story, but to no purpose. The Globe had us beaten. Although 
I had slaved over the text, given it the finest turns I could, 
still there on the front page of the Globe was a large picture 
of the bandit, seated in the sanctum sanctorum of the great 
G-D, a portion of the figure, although not the head, of its great 
chief standing in the background, and over it all, in extra 
large type, the caption: 

"LONE TRAIN ROBBER VISITS OFFICE OF GLOBE 
TO PAY HIS RESPECTS" 

and underneath in italics a full account of how he had will- 
ingly and gladly come there. 

I suffered tortures, not only for days but for weeks and 
months, absolute tortures. "Whenever I thought of Galvin I 
wanted to kill him. To think, I said to myself, that I had 
thought of the two trains and then run across the meadow 
and paid the agent for stopping the train, which permitted 
Galvin to see the burglar at all, and then to be done in this 
way! And, what was worse, he was so gayly and cynically 
conscious of having done me. "When we met on the street one 
day, his lip curled with the old undying hatred and contempt. 

"These swell reporters!" he sneered. "These high-priced 



306 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

ink-slingers! Say, who got the best of the train robber 
story, eh?" 

And I replied 

But never mind what I replied. No publisher would print 
it. 



CHAPTER XL VII 

Things like these taught me not to depend too utterly on 
my own skill. I might propose and believe, but there were 
things above my planning or powers, and creatures I might 
choose to despise were not so helpless after all. It fixed my 
thoughts permanently on the weakness of the human mind as 
a directing organ. One might think till doomsday in terms 
of human ideas, but apparently over and above ideas there 
were forces which superseded or controlled them. . . . My 
own fine contemptuous ideas might be superseded or set at 
naught by the raw animal or psychic force of a man like 
Galvin. 

During the next few months a number of things happened 
which seemed to broaden my horizon considerably. For one 
thing, my trip to Chicago having revived interest in me in the 
minds of a number of newspaper men there, and having seem- 
ingly convinced them of my success here, I was bombarded 
with letters from one and another wanting to know whether 
or not they could obtain work here and whether I could and 
would aid them. At the close of the Fair in Chicago in 
October hard times were expected in newspaper circles there, 
so many men being released from work. I had letters from 
at least four, one of whom was a hanger-on by the name of 
Michaelson, of whom more anon, who had attached himself 
to me largely because I was the stronger and he expected aid 
of me. I have often thought how frequently this has hap- 
pened to me — one of my typical experiences, as it is of every 
one who begins to get along. It is so much easier for the 
strong to tolerate the weak than the strong. Strength craves 
sycophancy. We want only those who will swing the censer 
before our ambitions and desires. Michaelson, or "Mich," 
was a poor hack who had been connected with a commercial 
agency where daily reports had to be written out as to the 

307 



308 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

financial and social condition of John Smith the butcher, or 
George Jones the baker. This led Mich, who was a farm- 
boy to begin with, to imagine that he could write and that he 
would like to run a country paper, only he thought to get some 
experience in the city first. By some process, of which I 
forget the steps, he fixed on me; and through myself and 
McEnnis, who was then so friendly to me, had secured a try- 
out on the Globe in Chicago. After I left McEnnis quickly 
tired of him, and I heard of him next as working for the City 
Press, an organization which served all newspapers, and paid 
next to nothing. Next I heard that he was married (having 
succeeded so well!), and still later he began to bombard me 
with pleas for aid in getting a place in St. Louis. Also there 
were letters from much better men : H. L. Dunlap, afterwards 
chief press advisor of President Taft; an excellent reporter 
by the name of Brady, whom I have previously mentioned; 
and a little later, John Maxwell. 

Meanwhile, in spite of my great failure in connection with 
Galvin, my standing with "Wandell seemed to rise rather than 
sink. Believe it or no, I became a privileged character about 
this institution or its city room, a singular thing in the news- 
paper profession. Because of specials I was constantly writ- 
ing for the Sunday paper, I was taken up by the sporting 
editor, who wanted my occasional help in his work ; the drama- 
tic editor, who wanted my help on his dramatic page, asking 
me to see plays from time to time ; and the managing editor 
himself, a small, courteous, soft-spoken, red-headed man from 
Kansas City, who began to invite me to lunch or dinner and 
talk to me as though I knew much (or ought to) about the 
world he represented. I was so unfitted for all this intellectu- 
ally, my hour of stability and feeling for organization and 
control having not yet arrived, that I scarcely knew how to 
manage it. I was nervous, shy, poorly spoken, at least in their 
presence, while inwardly I was blazing with ambition, vanity 
and self-confidence. I wanted nothing so much as to be alone 
with my own desires and labors even though I believed all the 
while that I did not and that I was lonely and neglected ! 

Unsophisticated as I really was, I began to see Wandell 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 309 

as but a minor figure in this journalistic world, or but one 
of many, likely to be here and gone tomorrow, and I swag- 
gered about, taking liberties which months before I should 
never have dreamed of taking. He talked to me too freely 
and showed me that he relied on my advice and judgment and 
admired my work. All out-of-town assignments of any im- 
portance were given to me. Occasionally at seven in the eve- 
ning he would say that he would buy me a drink if I would 
wait a minute, a not very wise thing to do. Later, after com- 
pleting one big assignment or another, I would stroll out of 
the office at, say, eight-thirty or nine without a word or a by- 
your -leave, and so respectful had he become that instead of 
calling me down in person he began writing me monitory 
letters, couched in the most diplomatic language but insisting 
that I abide by the rules which governed other reporters. But 
by now I had grown so in my own estimation that I smiled 
confidently, knowing very well that he would not fire me ; my 
salary was too small. Besides, I knew that he really needed 
me or some one like me and I saw no immediate rival any- 
where, one who would work as hard and for as little. Still 
I would reform for a time, or would plead that the managing 
or the dramatic editor had asked me to do thus and so. 

"To hell with the managing editor!" he one day exclaimed 
in a rage. "This is my department. If he wants you to. 
sit around with him let him come to me, or else you first see 
that you have my consent." 

At the same time he remained most friendly and would sit 
and chat over proposed stories, getting my advice as to how to 
do them, and as one man after another left him or he wanted 
to enlarge his staff he would ask me if I knew any one who 
would make a satisfactory addition. Having had these ap- 
peals from Dunlap, Brady and several others still in Chicago, 
I named first Dunlap (because I felt so sure of his merit), 
and then these others. To my surprise, he had me write 
Dunlap to come to work, and when he came and made 
good, Wandell asked me to bring still others to him. This 
flattered me very much. I felt myself becoming a power. The 
result was that after a time five men, three from Chicago and 



310 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

two from other papers in St. Louis, were transferred to the 
staff of the Republic by reason of my recommendation, and 
that with full knowledge of the fact that I was the one to 
whom they owed their opportunity. You may imagine the airs 
which I assumed. 

About this time still another thing occurred which lifted 
me still more in my own esteem. Strolling into the Southern 
Hotel one evening I chanced to see my old chief, McCullagh, 
sitting as was his custom near one of the pillars of the lobby 
reading his evening paper. It had always been such a pleasing 
and homelike thing in my days at the Globe to walk into the 
lobby around dinner time and see this great chief in his low 
shoes and white socks sitting and reading here as though he 
were in his own home. It took away a bit of the loneliness 
of the city for me for he appeared to have no other home than 
this and he was my chief. And now, for the first time since 
I had so ignominiously retired from the Globe, I saw him as 
before, smoking and reading. Hitherto I had carefully 
avoided this and every other place at such hours as I was 
likely to encounter him. But now I had grown so conceited 
that I was not quite so much afraid of him ; he was still won- 
derful to me but I was beginning to feel that I had a future 
of my own and that I could achieve it, regardless perhaps of 
the error that had so pained me then. Still I felt to the full 
all that old allegiance, respect and affection which had domi- 
nated me while I was on the Globe. He was my big editor, my 
chief, and there was none other like him anywhere for me, 
and there never was afterward. Nearing the newsstand, for 
which I made at sight of him in the hope that I should escape 
unseen, I saw him get up and come forward, perhaps to 
secure a cigar or another paper. I flushed guiltily and looked 
wildly about for some place to hide. It was not to be. 

"Good evening, Mr. McCullagh," I said politely as he 
neared me. 

"How d' do?" he returned gutturally but with such an air 
of sociability as I had never noticed in him before. "How d' 
do? Well, you're still about, I see. .You're on the Republic, 
I believe?" 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 311 

"Yes, sir," I said. I was so pleased and flattered to think 
that he should trouble to talk to me at all or to indicate that 
he knew where I was that I could scarcely contain myself. I 
wanted to thank him, to apologize, to tell him how wonderful 
he was to me and what a fool I was in my own estimation, 
but I couldn't. My tongue was thick. 

"You like it over there?" 

"Yes, sir. Fairly well, sir." I was as humble in his 
presence as a jackie is before an officer. He seemed always 
so forceful and commanding. 

"That little matter of those theaters," he began after a 
pause, turning and walking back to his chair, I following, 
' ' — Urn ! um ! I don 't think you understand quite how I felt 
about that. I was sorry to see you go. Um! um!" and he 
cleared his throat. ' ' It was an unfortunate mistake all around. 
I want you to know that I did not blame you so much. Um ! 
You might have been relieved of other work. I don 't want to 
take you away from any other paper, but — um ! — I want you 
to know that if you are ever free and want to come back you 
can. There is no prejudice in my mind against you. ' ' 

I don't know of anything that ever moved me more. It 
was wonderful, thrilling. I could have cried from sheer de- 
light. He, my chief, saying this to me ! And after all those 
wretched hours ! "What a fool I was, I now thought, not to 
have gone to him personally then and asked his consideration. 
However, as I saw it, it was too late. Why change now and 
go back? But I was so excited that I could scarcely speak, 
and probably would not have known what to say if I had 
tried. I stood there, and finally blurted out : 

"I'm very sorry, Mr. McCullagh. I didn't mean to do what 
I did. It was a mistake. I had that extra assignment and — " 

"O-oh, that's all right — that's all right," he insisted 
gruffly and as if he wished to be done with it once and for all. 
"No harm done. I didn't mind that so much. But you 
needn't have left — that's what I wish you to understand. 
You could have stayed if you had wanted to." 

As I viewed it afterward, my best opportunity for a secure 
position in St. Louis was here. If I had only known it, or. 



312 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

knowing, had been quick to take advantage of it, I might have 
profited greatly. Mr. MeCullagh's mood was plainly warm 
toward me; he probably looked upon me as a foolish and 
excitable but fairly capable boy whom it would have been 
his pleasure to assist in the world. He had brought me from 
Chicago ; perhaps he wished me to remain under his eye. . . . 
Plainly, a word, and I could have returned, I am sure of it, 
perhaps never to leave. As it was, however, I was so nervous 
and excited that I took no advantage of it. Possibly he 
noticed my embarrassment and was pleased. At any rate, as 
I mumbled my thanks and gratitude for all he had done for 
me, saying that if I were doing things over I should try to do 
differently, he interrupted me with : 

"Just a moment. It may be that you have some young 
friend whom you want to help to a position here in St. Louis. 
If you have, send him to me. 1 11 do anything I can for him. 
I 'm always glad to do anything I can for young men. ' ' 

I smiled and flushed and thanked him, but for the life of 
me I could think of nothing else to say. It was so strange, 
so tremendous, that this man should want to do anything for 
me after all the ridiculous things I had done under him that 
I could only hurry away, out of his sight. Once in the 
shielding darkness outside I felt better but sad. It seemed 
as if I had made a mistake, as if I should have asked him to 
take me back. . 

"Why, he as much as offered to!" I said to myself. "I 
can go back there any time I wish, or he'll give me a place 
for some one else — think of it! Then he doesn't consider me 
a fool, as I thought he did ! ' ' 

For days thereafter I went about my work trying to decide 
whether I should resign from the Republic and return to 
him, only now I seemed so very important here, to myself 
at least, that it did not seem wise. Wasn't I getting along? 
Would returning to work under Mitchell be an advantage? 
I decided not. Also, that I had no real excuse for leaving the 
Republic at present; so I did nothing, waiting to be abso- 
lutely sure what I wanted to do. There was a feeling grow- 
ing in me at this time that I really did not want to stay in 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 313 

St. Louis at all, that perhaps it would be better for me if I 
should move on elsewhere. McEnnis, as I recalled, had cau- 
tioned me to that effect. Another newspaper man writing 
me from Chicago and asking for a place (a friend of Dun- 
lap's, by the way), I recommended him and he was put to 
work on the Globe-Democrat. And so my reputation for 
influence in local newspaper affairs grew. 

And in the meantime still other things had been happening 
to me which seemed to complicate my life here and make me 
almost a fixture in St. Louis. For one thing, worrying over the 

well-being of my two brothers, E and A , who were 

still in Chicago, and wishing to do something to improve 
their condition, I thought that St. Louis would be as good a 
place for them as any in which to try their fortunes anew. 
Both had seemed rather unhappy in Chicago and since I was 
getting along here I felt that it would be only decent in me 
to give them a helping hand if I could. The blood-tie was 
rather strong in me then. I have always had a weakness for 
members of our family regardless of their deserts or mine or 
what I thought they had done to me. I had a comfortable 
floor with ample room for them if I chose to invite them, and 
I thought that my advice and aid and enthusiasm might help 
them to do better. There was in me then, and has remained 
(though in a fading form, I am sorry to say), a sort of 
home-longing (the German Eeimweh, no doubt) which made 
me look back on everything in connection with our troubled 
lives with a sadness, an ache, a desire to remedy or repair 
if possible some of the ills and pains that had beset us all. 
We had not always been unhappy together ; what family ever 
has been? "We had quarreled over trivial things, but there 
had been many happy hours. And now we were separated, 
and these two brothers were not doing as well as I. 

I say it in faint extenuation of all the many hard unkind 
things I have done in my time, that at the thought of the 
possible misery some of my brothers and sisters might be en- 
during, the lacks from which they might be hopelessly suffer- 
ing, my throat often tightened and my heart ached. Life 
bears so hard on us all, on many so terribly. What, E 



314 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

or A longing for something and not being able to afford 

it! It hurt me far more than any lack of my own ever 
could. It never occurred to me that they might be wishing 
to help me; it was always I, hard up or otherwise, wishing 
that I might do something for them. And this longing in the 
face of no complaint on their part and no means on mine to 
translate it into anything much better than wishes and dreams 
made it all the more painful at times. 

My plan was to bring them here and give them a little 
leisure to look about for some way to better themselves, and 
then — well, then I should not need to worry about them so 

much. With this in mind I wrote first to E and then 

A , and the former, younger and more restless and always 

more attracted to me than any of the others, soon came on; 

while A required a little more time to think. However, 

in the course of time he too appeared, and then we three 
were installed in my rooms, the harboring of my brothers 
costing me five additional dollars. Here we kept bachelor's 
hall, gay enough while it lasted but more or less clouded over 
all the while by their need of finding work. 

I had forgotten, or did not know, or the fact did not make 
a sufficiently sharp impression on me, that this was a panic 
year (1893) and that there were hundreds of thousands of 
men out of work, the country over. Indeed, trade was at a 
standstill, or nearly so. When I first went on the Republic, 
if I had only stopped to remember, many factories were 
closing down or slowing up, discharging men or issuing scrip 
of their own wherewith to pay them until times should be 
better, and some shops and stores were failing entirely. It 
had been my first experience of a panic and should have made 
a deep impression on me had I been of a practical turn, for one 
of my earliest assignments had been to visit some of the owners 
of factories and stores and shops and ask the cause of their 
decline and whether better times were in sight. Occasionally 
even then I read long editorials in the Republic or the Globe 
on the subject, yet I could take no interest in them. They 
were too heavy, as I thought. Yet I can remember the gloom 
hanging over streets and shops and how solemnly some of the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 315 

manufacturers spoke of the crisis and the hard times yet in 
store. There were to be hard times for a year or more. 

I recall one old man at this time, very prosy and stiff and 
conventional, "one of our best business men," who had had 
a large iron factory on the south side for fifty years and who 
now in his old age had to shut down for good. Being sent out 
to interview him, I found him after a long search in one of 
the silent wings of his empty foundry, walking about alone 
examining some machinery which also was still. I asked him 
what the trouble was and if he would resume work soon 
again. 

"Just say that I 'm done, ' ' he replied. ' ' This panic has fin- 
ished me. I could go on later, I suppose, but I'm too old to 
begin all over again. I haven't any money now, and that's 
all there is to it." 

I left him meditating over some tool he was trying to 
adjust. 

In the face of this imagine my gayly inviting my two 
brothers to this difficult scene and then expecting them to get 
along in some way, persuading them to throw up whatever 
places or positions they had In Chicago! Yet in so doing 
I satisfied an emotional or psychic longing to have them near 
me and to do something for them, and beyond that I did not 
think. 

In fact it took me years and years to get one thing straight 
in my poor brain, and that was this: that aside from the 
economic or practical possibility of translating one's dreams 
into reality, the less one broods over them the better. Here I 
was now, earning the very inadequate stipend of eighteen 
dollars — or it may have been twenty or twenty-two, for I have 
a dim recollection of having been given at least one raise in 
pay — yet with no more practical sense than to undertake a 
burden which I could not possibly sustain. For despite my 
good intentions I had no surplus wherewith to sustain my 
brothers, assuming that their efforts proved even temporarily 
unavailing. All this dream of doing something for them was 
based on good will and a totally inadequate income. In con- 
sequence it could not but fail, as it did, seeing that St. Louis 



316 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

was far less commercially active than Chicago. It was not 
growing much and there was an older and much more Euro- 
pean theory of apprenticeship and continuity in place and 
type of work than prevailed at that time in the windy city. 
Work was really very hard to get, especially in manufacturing 
and commercial lines, and in consequence my two brothers, 
after only a week or two of pleasuring, which was all I could 
afford, were compelled to hunt here and there, early and late, 
without finding anything to do. True, I tried to help them in 
one way and another with advice as to institutions, lines of 
work and the like, but to no end. 

But before and after they came, how enthusiastically 
and no doubt falsely I painted the city of St. Louis, its large 
size, opportunities, beauties, etc., and once they were here I 
put myself to the task of showing them its charms ; but to no 
avail. We went about together to restaurants, parks, theaters, 
outlying places. As long as it was new and they felt that 
there was some hope of finding work they were gay enough 
and interested and we spent a number of delightful hours 
together. But as time wore on and fading summer days 
proved that their dreams and mine were hopeless and they 
could do no better here than in Chicago if as well, their moods 
changed, as did mine. The burden of expense was con- 
siderable. While paying gayly enough for food and rent, 
and even laundry, for the three, I began to wonder whether 
I should be able to endure the strain much longer. Love them 
as I might in their absence, and happy as I was with them, 
still it was not possible for me to keep up this pace. I was 
depriving myself of bare necessities, and I think they saw it. 
I said nothing, of that I am positive, but after a month or 
six weeks of trial and failure they themselves saw the point 
and became unhappy over it. Our morning and evening 
hours, whenever I could see them in the evening, became less 
and less gay. Finally A , with his usual eye for the sensi- 
ble, announced that he was tired of searching here and was 
about to return to Chicago. He did not like St. Louis any- 
how; it was a ''hell of a place," a third-rate city. He was 
going back where he could get work. And E , perhaps 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 317 

recalling past joys of which I knew nothing, said he was 
going also. And so once more I was alone. 

Yet even this rough experience had no marked effect on me. 
It taught me little if anything in regard to the economic 
struggle. I know now that these two must have had a hard 
time replacing themselves in Chicago at that time, but the 

meaning of it did not get to me then. As for E , some 

years later I persuaded him to join me in New York, where 
I managed to keep him by me that time until he became self- 
supporting. 



CHAPTER XL VIII 

Because Miss W lived some distance from the city and 

would remain there until her school season opened, I neglected 
to write to her; but once September had come and the day 
of her return was near I began to think of her and soon was 
as keenly interested as ever. Her simplicity and charm 
came back to me with great force, and I one day sat down 
and wrote her a brief letter recalling our Chicago days and 
asking her how long it would be before she would be return- 
ing to St. Louis. I was rather nervous now lest she should 
not answer. 

In due time, however, a note came in which she told me that 
she expected to be at Florissant, about twenty or twenty-five 
miles out of St. Louis, by September fifteenth, when her 
school work would begin, and that she would be in St. Louis 
shortly afterward to visit an aunt and hoped to see me. There 
was something about the letter so simple, direct and yet artful 
that it touched me deeply. As I have said, I really knew 
nothing of the conditions which surrounded her, and yet 
from the time I received this letter I sensed something that 
appealed to me : a rurality and simplicity plus a certain artful 
daintiness — the power, I suppose, to pose under my glance 
and yet evade — which held me as in a vise. Beside her, all 
others seemed harder, bolder, or of coarser fiber. 

It does not matter now but as I look back on it there seems 
to have been more of pure, exalted or frenetic romance in 
this thing (at first, and even a year or so afterward), than in 
any mating experience of which I have any recollection, with 
the possible exception of Alice. Unlike most of my other 
affairs, this (in the beginning at least) seemed more a matter 
of pure romance or poetry, a desire to see and be near her. 
Indeed I could only think of her as a part of some idyllic 
country scene, of walking or riding with her along some 

318 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 319 

leafy country lane, of rowing a little boat on a stream, of 
sitting with her under trees in a hammock, of watching her 
play tennis, of being with her where grass, flowers, trees and a 
blue sky were. In that idyllic world of the Fair she had 
seemed well-placed. This must be a perfect love, I thought. 
Here was your truly sweet, pure girl who inspired a man 
with a nobler passion than mere lust. I began to picture my- 
self with her in a home somewhere, possibly here in St. 
Louis, of going with her to church even, for I fancied she 
was of a strict religious bent, of pushing a baby carriage — in- 
deed, of leading a thoroughly domestic life, and being happy 
in it ! 

We fell into a correspondence which swiftly took on a 
regular form and resulted, on my part, in a most extended 
correspondence, letters so long that they surprised even my- 
self. I found myself in the grip of a letter-writing fever 
such as hitherto had never possessed me, writing long, per- 
sonal, intimate accounts of my own affairs, my work, my 
dreams, what not, as well as what I thought of her, of the 
beauty of life as I had seen it with her in Chicago, my the- 
ories and imaginings in regard to everything. As I see it now, 
this was perhaps my first and easiest attempt at literary ex- 
pression, the form being negligible and yet sufficient to encom- 
pass and embody without difficulty all the surging and seeth- 
ing emotions and ideas which had hitherto been locked up 
in me, bubbling and steaming to the explosion point. In- 
deed the newspaper forms to which I was daily compelled 
to confine myself offered no outlet, and in addition, in Miss 
W I had found a seemingly sympathetic and understand- 
ing soul, one which required and inspired all the best that 
was in me. I was now, as I told myself, on the verge of 
something wonderful, a new life. I must work, save, advance 
myself and better my condition generally, so as to be worthy 
of her. ... At the very same time I was still able to 
see beauty in other women and the cloying delights of those 
who would never be able to be as good as she ! They might 
be good enough for me but far beneath her whose eyes were 
"too pure to behold evil." 



320 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

In the latter part of September she came to St. Louis and 
gave me my first delighted sight of her since we had left 
Chicago. At this time I was at the topmost toss of my ad- 
ventures in St. Louis. I was, as I now assumed, somebody. 
By now also I had found a new room in the very heart of 
the city, on Broadway near the Southern, and was leading 
a bachelor existence under truly metropolitan circum- 
stances. This room was on the third floor rear of a building 
which looked out over some nondescript music hall whose 
glass roof was just below and from whence nightly, and 
frequently in the afternoon, issued all sorts of garish music 
hall clatter, including music and singing and voices in mono- 
logue or dialogue. One block south were the Southern Hotel, 
Faust's Kestaurant, and the Olympic Theater. In the block 
north were the courthouse and Dick's old room, which by 
now he had abandoned, having in spite of all his fine dreams 
of a resplendent heiress married a girl whom together we had 
met in the church some months before — a circus-rider ! There- 
after he had removed to a prosaic flat on the south side, an in- 
stitution which seemed to me but a crude and rather pathetic 
attempt at worthless domesticity. 

I should like to report here that something over a year 
later this first marriage of his terminated in the death of his 
wife. Later — some two or three years — he indulged in a 
second most prosaic and inartistic romance — wedding finally, 
on this occasion, the daughter of a carpenter. And her 
name — Sopheronisby Boanerga Watkins. And a year or two 
after this she was burned to death by an exploding oil stove. 
And this was the man who was bent on capturing an heiress. 

In my new room therefore, because it was more of a cen- 
ter, I had already managed to set up a kind of garret salon, 
which was patronized by Dick and Peter, Rodenberger, Dun- 
lap, Brady and a number of other acquaintances. No sooner 
was I settled here than Michaelson, whose affairs I had 
straightened out by getting him a place on the Republic, put 
in an appearance, and also John Maxwell, who because of 
untoward conditions in Chicago had come to St. Louis to bet- 
ter his fortunes. But more of that later. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 321 

In spite of all these friends and labors and attempts at 

aiding others, it was my affair with Miss W which now 

completely engrossed me. So seriously had I taken this new 
adventure to heart that I was scarcely able to eat or sleep. 
Once I knew definitely that she was inclined to like me, as 
her letters proved, and the exact day of her arrival had 
been fixed, I walked on air. I had not been able to save 
much money since I had been on the Republic (possibly a 
hundred dollars all told, and that since my brothers had left), 
but of that I took forty or fifty and bought a new fall suit of 
a most pronounced if not startling pattern, the coat being 
extra long and of no known relation to any current style (an 
idea of my own), to say nothing of such extras as patent 
leather shoes, ties, collars, a new pearl-gray hat — all pur- 
chased in view of this expected visit for her especial delecta- 
tion ! Although I had little money for what I considered the 
essentials of courtship — theater boxes, dinners and suppers at 
the best restaurants, flowers, candy — still I hoped to make an 
impression. Why shouldn't I? Being a newspaper man and 
an ex-dramatic editor, to say nothing of my rather close 
friendship with the present Republic critic, I could easily 
obtain theater tickets, although the exigencies of my work 
often prevented, as I discovered afterward, my accompanying 
her for more than an hour at a time. 



CHAPTER XLIX 

On the day of her arrival I arrayed myself in my best, 
armed myself with flowers, candy and two tickets for the 
theater, and made my way out to her aunt's in one of the 
simpler home streets in the west end. I was so fearful that 
my afternoon assignment should prove a barrier to my seeing 
her that day that I went to her as early as ten-thirty, intend- 
ing to offer her the tickets and arrange to stop for her after- 
wards at the theater; or, failing that, to see her for a little 
while in the evening if my assignments permitted. I was so 
vain of my standing in her eyes, so anxious to make a good 
impression, that I was ashamed to confess that my reportorial 
duties made it difficult for me to see her at all. After my 
free days in Chicago I wanted her to think that I was more 
than a mere reporter, a sort of traveling correspondent and 
feature man, which in a way I was, only my superiors were 
determined to keep me for some reason in the ordinary re- 
portorial class taking daily assignments as usual. Instead of 
confessing my difficulties I made a great show of freedom. 

I found her in a small tree-shaded, cool-looking brick house, 
with a brick sidewalk before it and a space of grass on one 
side. Never did place seem more charming. I stared at it 
as one might at a shrine. Here at last was the temporary 
home of my beloved, and she was within! 

I knocked, and an attractive slip of a girl (her niece, as I 
learned) answered. I was shown into a long, dustless, dark- 
ened parlor. After giving me time to weigh the taste and 
affluence of her relatives according to my standards, she ar- 
rived, the beloved, the beautiful. In view of many later 
sadder things, it seems that here at least I might attempt to 
do her full justice. She seemed exquisite to me then, a trim, 
agreeable sylph of a girl, with a lovely oval face, stark red 
hair braided and coiled after the fashion of a Greek head, 

322 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 323 

a clear pink skin, long, narrow, almond-shaped, gray-blue 
eyes, delicate, graceful hands, a perfect figure, small well- 
formed feet. There was something of the wood or water 
nymph about her, a seeking in her eyes, a breath of wild 
winds in her hair, a scarlet glory to her mouth. And yet 
she was so obviously a simple and inexperienced country 
girl, caught firm and fast in American religious and puritanic 
traditions and with no hint in her mind of all the wild, mad 
ways of the world. Sometimes I have grieved that she ever 
met me, or that I so little understood myself as to have sought 
her out. 

I first saw her, after this long time, framed in a white 
doorway, and she made a fascinating picture. Here, as in 
Chicago, she seemed shy, innocent, questioning, as one who 
might fly at the first sound. I gazed in admiration. Despite 
a certain something in her letters which had indirectly as- 
sured me of her affection or her desire for mine, still she 
held aloof, extending a cool hand and asking me to sit down, 
smiling tenderly and graciously. I felt odd, out of place, and 
yet wonderfully drawn to her, passionately interested. What 
followed by way of conversation I cannot remember now — talk 
of the Fair, I suppose, some of those we had known, her 
summer, mine. She took my roses and pinned some of them 
on, placing the rest in a jar. There was a piano here, and 
after a time she consented to play. In a moment, it seemed, 
it was twelve-thirty, and I had to go. 

I walked on air. It seemed to me that I had never seen 
any one more beautiful — and I doubt now that I had. There 
was no reason to be applied to the thing : it was plain infatua- 
tion, a burning, consuming desire for her. If I had lost her 
then and there, or any time within a year thereafter, I should 
have deemed it the most amazing affair of my life. 

I returned to the office and took some assignment, which I 
cut short at three-thirty in order to get back to the Grand 
Opera House to sit beside her. The play was an Irish love 
drama, with Chauncey Olcott, the singing comedian, in the 
title role. With her beside me I thought it perfect. Love! 
Ah, love! When the performance was ended I was ready 



324 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

to weep over the torturing beauty of life. Outside we found 
the matinee crowds, the carriages, the sense of autumn gayety 
and show in the air. A nearby ice-cream and candy store 
was crowded to suffocation. Young girls of the better fami- 
lies hummed like bees.. Because of my poverty and uncertain 
station I felt depressed, at the same time pretending to a 
station which I felt to be most unreal. The mixture of am- 
bition and uncertainty, pride, a gay coaxing in the air, added 
to the need to return to conventional toil — how these tortured 
me ! Nothing surprises me now more than my driving emo- 
tions all through this period. I was as one possessed. 

We parted at a street-car — when I wanted a carriage ! We 
met at her aunt's home at eight-thirty, because I saw an 
opportunity of deliberately evading an assignment. In this 
simple parlor I dreamed the wildest, the most fantastic dreams. 
She was the be-all and the end-all of my existence. Now I 
must work for her, wait for her, succeed for her ! Her medi- 
ocre piano technique seemed perfect, her voice ideal ! Never 
was such beauty, such color. St. Louis took on a glamour 
which it had never before possessed. ... If only this love 
affair could have gone on to a swift fruition it would have been 
perfect, blinding. 

But all the formalities, traditions, beliefs, of a conven- 
tional and puritanic region were in the way. Love, as it is 
in most places, and despite its consuming blaze, was a slow 
process. There must be many such visits, I knew, before I 
could even place an arm about her. I was to be permitted 
to take her to church, to concerts, the theater, a restaurant 
occasionally, but nothing more. 

The next morning I went to church with her; the next af- 
ternoon unavoidable work kept me from her, but that night 
I shirked and stayed with her until eleven. The next morn- 
ing, since she had to catch an early train for Florissant, I 
slept late, but during the next two weeks (she could not come 
oftener, having to spend one Sunday with her "folks," as 
she referred to them) I poured forth ray amazement and 
delight on reams of thin paper. I wonder now where they 
are. Once there was a trunk full. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 325 

Perhaps the most interesting effect of this sudden fierce 
passion was the heightened color it lent to everything. Never 
before had I realized quite so clearly the charm of life as 
life, its wondrous singing, its intense appeal. I remember 
witnessing a hanging about this time, standing beside the mur- 
derer when the trap was sprung, and being horrified, sickened 
to death, yet when I returned to the office and there was a 
letter from her — the world was perfect once more, no evil or 
pain in it! I followed up the horrors of a political catas- 
trophe, in which a city treasurer shot himself to escape the 
law — but a letter from her, and the world was beautiful. A 
negro in an outlying county assaulted a girl, and I arrived 
in time to see him lynched, but walking in the wood afterward, 
away from the swinging body, I thought of her — and life 
contained not a single ill. Such is infatuation. If I had 
been alive before, now I was more than alive. I tingled all 
over with longing and aspiration — to be an editor, a publisher, 
a playwright — I 'know not what. The simple homes I had 
dreamed over before as representing all that was charming 
and soothing and shielding were now twice as attractive. 
Love, all its possibilities, paraded before my eyes, a gorgeous, 
fantastic procession. Love! Love! The charm of a home 
in which it would find its most appropriate setting! The 
brooding tenderness of it! Its healing force against the 
blows of ordinary life ! To be married, to have your beloved 
with you, to have a charming home to which to return of an 
evening, or at any hour, sick or well ! I was young, in good 
health and spirits. In a few years I should be neither so 
young nor so vital. Age would descend, cold, gray, thin, pas- 
sionless. This glorious, glorious period of love, desire, would 
be gone, and then what ? Ah, and then what ! If I did not 
achieve now and soon all that I desired in the way of tender- 
ness, fortune, beauty — now when I was young and could en- 
joy it — my chance would once and for all be over. I should 
be helpless. Youth would come no more ! Love would come 
no more ! But now — now — life was sounding, singing, urging, 
teasing; but also it was running away fast, and what was I 
doing about it? What could I do? 



326 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

The five months which followed were a period of just such 
color and mood, the richest period of rank romanticism I have 
ever endureM. At times I could laugh, at others sigh, over 
the incidents of this period, for there is as little happiness 
in love as there is out of it, at least in my case. If I had 
only known myself I might have seen, and that plainly, that 
it was not any of the charming conventional things which this 
girl represented but her charming physical self that I craved. 
The world, as I see it now, has trussed itself up too helplessly 
with too many strings of convention, religion, dogma. It has 
accepted too many rules, all calculated for the guidance of 
individuals in connection with the propagation and rearing 
of children, the conquest and development of this planet. 
This is all very well for those who are interested in that, but 
what of those who are not? Is it everybody's business to 
get married and accept all the dictates of conventional so- 
ciety — that is, bear and rear children according to a given 
social or religious theory? Cannot the world have too much 
of mere breeding? Are two billion wage slaves, for instance, 
more advantageous than one billion, or one billion more than 
five hundred million? Or is an unconquered planet less 
interesting than a conquered one? Isn't the mere contact of 
love, if it produces ideas, experiences, tragedies even, as im- 
portant as raising a few hundred thousand coal miners, rail- 
road hands or heroes destined to be eventually ground or shot 
in some contest with autocratic or capitalistic classes? And, 
furthermore, I am inclined to suspect that the monogamous 
standard to which the world has been tethered much too 
harshly for a thousand years or more now is entirely wrong. I 
do not believe that it is Nature 's only or ultimate way of con- 
tinuing or preserving itself. Nor am I inclined to accept the 
belief that it produces the highest type of citizen. The ancient 
world knew little of strict monogamy, and some countries 
today are still without it. Even in our religious or moralistic 
day we are beginning to see less and less of its strict enforce- 
ment. (Fifty thousand divorces in one State in one year is 
but a straw.) It is a product, I suspect, of intellectual leth- 
argy or dullness, a mental incapacity for individuality. What 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 327 

we have achieved is a vast ruthless machine for the propaga- 
tion of people far beyond the world's need, even its capacity 
to support decently. In special cases, where the strong find 
themselves, we see more of secret polygamy and polyandry 
than is suspected by the dull and the ignorant. Economic 
opportunity, plus love or attraction, arranges all this, all the 
churches, laws, disasters to the contrary notwithstanding. 
Love or desire, where economic conditions permit, will and 
does find a way. 

Here I was dreaming of all the excellencies of which the 
conventionalists prate in connection with home, peace, sta- 
bility and the like, anxious to put my neck under that yoke, 
when in reality what I really wanted, and the only thing 
that my peculiarly erratic and individual disposition would 
permit, was mental and personal freedom. I did not really 
want any such conventional girl at all, and if I had clearly 
understood what it all meant I might have been only too glad 
to give her up. What I wanted was the joy of possessing her 
without any of the hindrances or binding chains of conven- 
tion and monogamy, but she would none of it. This unsatis- 
fied desire, added to a huge world-sorrow over life itself, the 
richness and promise of the visible scene, the sting and urge 
of its beauty, the briefness of our days, the uncertainty of our 
hopes, the smallness of our capacity to achieve or consume 
where so much is, produced an intense ache and urge which 
endured until I left St. Louis. I was so staggered by the 
promise and the possibilities of life, at the same time growing 
more and more doubtful of my capacity to achieve anything, 
that I was falling into a profound sadness. Yet I was only 
twenty-two, and between these thoughts would come intense 
waves of do and dare : I was to be all that I fancied, achieve 
all that I dreamed. As a contrast to all these thoughts, fan- 
cies, and depressions, I indulged in a heavy military coat 
of the most disturbing length, a wide-brimmed Stetson hat, 
Southern style, gloves, a cane, soft pleated shirts — a most outre 
equipment for all occasions including those on which I could 
call upon her or take her to a theater or restaurant. I re- 
member one Saturday morning, when I was on my way to see 



328 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

my lady love and had stopped at the Olympic to secure two 
seats, meeting a dapper, rather flashy newspaper man. I had 
on the military coat, and the hat, a pair of bright yellow 
gloves, narrow-toed patent leather shoes, a ring, a pin, a suit 
brighter than his own, a cane, and 1 was carrying a bouquet 
of roses. I was about to take a street-car out to her place, 
not being prosperous enough to hire a carriage. 

' ' Well, for sake, old man, what 's up ? " he called, seiz- 
ing me by the arm. "You're not getting married, are you?" 

"Aw, cut the comedy!" I replied, or words to that effect. 
"Can't a fellow put on any decent clothes in this town with- 
out exciting the natives? What's wrong?" 

"Nothing, nothing," he replied apologetically. "You look 
swell. You got on more dog than ever I see a newspaper 
man around here pull. You must be getting along ! How are 
things at the Republic, anyhow?" 

We now conversed more affably. He touched the coat gin- 
gerly and with interest, felt of the quality of the cloth, looked 
me up and down, seemingly with admiration — more likely 
with amazement — shook his head approvingly and said: 
"Some class, I must say. You're right there, sport, with 
the raiment," and walked off. 

It was in this style that I prosecuted my quest. For my 
ordinary day 's labor I wore other clothes, but sometimes, 
when stealing a march on my city editor Saturday afternoons 
or Sundays or evenings, I had to perform a lightning change 
act in order to get into my finery, pay my visit, and still get 
back to the office between eleven and twelve, or before six- 
thirty, in my ordinary clothes. Sometimes I changed as many 
as three times in one afternoon or evening. My room being 
near here facilitated this. A little later, when I was more 
experienced, I aided myself to this speed by wearing all but 
the coat and hat, an array in which I never presumed to 
enter the office. Even my ultra impressive suit and my shoes, 
shirts and ties attracted attention. 

1 ' Gee whiz, Mr. Dreiser ! ' ' my pet office boy at the Republic 
once remarked to me as I entered in this array, ' ' you certainly 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 329 

look as though you ought to own the paper ! The boss don 't 
look like you." 

Wandell, Williams, the sporting editor, the religious editor, 
the dramatic editor, all eyed me with evident curiosity. "You 
certainly are laying it on thick these days, ' ' Williams genially 
remarked, beaming on me with his one eye. 

As for my lady love — well, I reached the place where I 
could hold her hand, put my arms about her, kiss her, but 
never could I induce her to sit upon my lap. That was re- 
served for a much later date. 



CHAPTER L 

All love transports contain an element of the ridiculous, I 
presume, but to each how very important. I will pass mine 
over with what I have already said, save this : that each little 
variation in her costume, however slight, in her coiffure, or 
the way she looked or walked amid new surroundings, all 
seemed to re-emphasize the perfection that I had discovered 
and was so fortunate as to possess. She gave me her photo- 
graph, which I framed in silver and hung in my room. I 
begged for a lock of her hair, and finding a bit of blue ribbon 
that I knew belonged to her purloined that. She would not 
allow me to visit at Florissant, where she taught, being bash- 
ful about confessing this new relationship, but nevertheless, 
on several Sundays when she was at her home "up the State" 
I visited this glorious region, hallowed by her presence, and 
tried to decide for myself just where she lived and taught — 
her sacred rooms ! A little later an exposition or State Fair 
was held in the enormous exposition building at Fourteenth 
and Olive streets, and here, when the Sousa concerts were 
first on, and later when the gay Veiled Prophets festivities 
began (a sort of Roman Harvest rejoicing, winding up with a 
great parade and ball), I saw more of her than ever before. 
It was during this time, in a letter, that she confessed that she 
loved me. Before this, however, seeing that I made no prog- 
ress in any other way, being allowed no intimacy beyond an 
occasional stolen kiss, I had proposed to her and been accepted 
with a kind of morbid formalism. I had had to ask her in the 
most definite way and be formally accepted as her affianced 
husband. Thereafter I squandered my last cent to purchase a 
diamond ring at wholesale, secured through a friend on the 
Globe, and then indeed I felt myself set up in the world, as 
one who was destined to tread the conventional and peaceful 
ways of the majority. 

330 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 331 

Yet in spite of my profound infatuation I was still able to 
see beauty in other women and be moved by it. The chemical 
attractions and repulsions which draw us away from one and 
to another are beginning to be more clearly understood in 
these days and to undermine our more formal notions of sta- 
bility and order, but even at that time this variation in myself 
might have taught me to look with suspicion on my own emo- 
tions. I think I did imagine that I was a scoundrel in har- 
boring lusts after other women, when I was so deeply in- 
volved with this one, but I told myself that I must be pecu- 
liarly afflicted in this way, that all men were not so, that I 
myself should and probably would hold myself in check even- 
tually, etc.; all of which merely proves how disjointed and 
non-self-understanding can be the processes of the human 
mind. Not only do we fail to see ourselves as others see us 
but we have not the faintest conception of ourselves as we 
really are. 

An incident which might have proved to me how shallow 
was the depth of my supposed feeling, and that it was nothing 
more than a strong sex-desire, was this: One night about 
twelve a telephone message to the Republic stated that on a 
branch extension of one of the car lines, about seven or eight 
miles from the city, a murder had just been committed. Three 
negroes entering a lone "Owl" car, which ran from the city 
terminus to a small village had shot and killed the conductor 
and fired on the motorman. A young girl who had been on 
board, the only passenger, had escaped by the front door and 
had not since been heard of — or so the telephone message 
stated. As I happened to be in the office at the time, the 
story was assigned to me. 

By good luck I managed to catch a twelve o'clock theater 
car and arrived at the end of the line at twelve-forty, where 
I learned that the body of the dead man had been transferred 
to his home at some point farther out, and that a posse of male 
residents of the region had already been organized and were 
now helping the police to search this country round for the 
negroes. When I asked about the girl who had been on 
board one of the men at the barn exclaimed : ' ' Sure, she 's a 



332 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

wonder ! You want to tell about her. She hunted up a house, 
borrowed a horse, and notified everybody along the route. 
She's the one that first phoned the news." 

Here was a story indeed. Midnight, a murder, dark woods, 
lonely country. A girl flees from three murderous, drunken 
negroes, borrows a horse, and tells all the countryside. What 
more could a newspaper man want? I was all ears. Now if 
she were only good-looking ! 

I now realized that my first duty was not so much to see 
the body of the dead man and interview his wife, although 
that was an item not to be neglected, or the motorman who 
had escaped with his life, although he was here and told me 
all that had happened quite accurately, but this girl, this 
heroine, who, they said, was no more than seventeen or 
eighteen. 

The car in which the murder had been committed was here 
in the barn. The blood-stains of the victim were still to be 
seen on the floor. I took this car, which was now carrying a 
group of detectives, a doctor and some other officials, to the 
dead man's house, or to the house of the girl, I forget which. 
When I arrived there I discovered that a large comfortable 
residence some little distance beyond the home of the dead 
man was the scene of all news and activity, for here it was that 
the body of the conductor had been carried, and from here 
the girl had taken a horse and ridden far and wide to call 
others to her aid. When I hurried up to the door she had 
returned and was holding a sort of levee. The large living- 
room was crowded, and in the center, under the flare of a 
hanging lamp, was this maiden, rather pretty, with her hair 
brushed straight back from her forehead, and her face alight 
with the intensity of her recent experiences and actions. I 
drew near and surveyed her over the shoulders of the others 
as she talked, finally getting close enough to engage her in 
direct conversation, as was my duty. She was very simple 
in manner and speech — not quite the dashing heroine I had 
imagined yet attractive enough. For my benefit, and pos- 
sibly for the dozenth time, she narrated all that had befallen 
her from the time she boarded the car until she had leaped 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 333 

from the front step after the shot and hid in the wood, finding 
her way to this house eventually and borrowing a horse to 
notify others, because, for one thing, there was no telephone 
here, and for another there was no man at home at the time 
who could have gone for her. "With a kind of naif enthusiasm 
she explained to me that once the shot had been fired and the 
conductor had fallen face down in the car (he had come in to 
rebuke these boisterous blacks, who were addressing bold re- 
marks to her), she was cold with fright, but that after 
she had left the car she felt calmer and determined to do some- 
thing to aid in the capture of the murderers. Hiding behind 
bushes, she had seen the negroes dash out of the rear door 
of the car and run back along the track into the darkness, and 
had then hurried in the other direction, coming to this house 
and summoning aid. ... It was a fine story, her ride 
in the darkness and how people rose to come out and help 
her. I made copious notes in my mind, took her name and 
address, visited the conductor 's wife, who was a little distance 
away, and then hurried to the nearest telephone to communi- 
cate my news. 

During this conversation with the girl I made an impres- 
sion on her. As we talked I had drawn quite close and my 
enthusiasm for her deed had drawn forth various approving 
smiles and exclamations. When I took her address I said I 
should like to know more of her, and she smiled and said: 
' ' Well, you can see me any time tomorrow. ' ' This was Satur- 
day night. 

The Republic at this time had instituted what it called a 
"reward for heroism" medal to be given to whosoever 
should perform a truly heroic deed during the current year 
within the city or its immediate suburbs. Thinking over this 
girl 's deed as I went along, and wondering how I should pro- 
ceed in the matter of retaining her interest, I thought of this 
medal and asked myself why it should not be given to her. 
She was certainly worthy of it. Plainly she was a hero, rid- 
ing thus in the darkness and in the face of such a crime — and 
good-looking too! — and eighteen! After I had reached the 
office and written a most glowing account of all this for the 



334 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

late edition, I decided to speak to Wandell the next day, and 
did. He fell in with the idea at once. 

' ' A fine idea, ' ' he squeaked shrilly. ' ■ Bully — we '11 do that ! 
You'll have to go back, though, and see whether she'll accept 
it. Sometimes these people won't stand for all this notoriety 

stuff, you know. But if she does By the way," he asked 

quickly, "is she good-looking?" 

' ' Sure, ' ' I replied enthusiastically. ' ' She 's very good-look- 
ing — a beauty, I think." 

"Well, if that's the case all the better. She must be made 
to give you a picture. Don't let her crawl out of that, even 
if you have to bring her down here or take her to a photog- 
rapher. If she accepts I '11 order the medal tomorrow, and you 
can write the whole thing up. It'll make a fine Sunday fea- 
ture, eh ? Dreiser's girl hero ! What ! ' ' 

This medal idea was just the thing to take me back to her, 
the excuse I needed and one that ought to bring her close to 
me if anything could. For the time being, I had forgotten all 

about Miss W and her charms. She came into my mind, 

but it was so all-important for me to follow up this new in- 
terest — one that I could manage quite as well as not, along 
with the other. I dressed in my very best clothes the next 
morning, excluding the amazing coat, and sallied forth to 
find my heroine. After considerable difficulty I managed to 
place her in a very simple home on what had once been a 
farm. Her father, who opened the door, was a German of the 
most rigid and austere mien — a Lutheran, I think — her mother 
a simple and pleasant-looking fat hausfrau. In the garish 
noon light my heroine was neither so melodramatic nor so 
poignant as she had seemed the night before. There was 
something less alive and less delicate in her composition, 
mental and physical, and yet she was by no means dull. Per- 
haps she lacked the excitement and the crowd. She had a 
peculiar mouth, a little wide but sweet, and a most engaging 
smile. Incidentally, it now developed that she had a younger 
sister, darker, more graceful, almost more attractive than 
herself. 

The two of them, as I soon found upon entering into con- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 335 

versation, offered that same problem in American life that 
so many children of foreign-born parents do. Although by 
no means poor, they were restless, if not unhappy, in their 
state. The old German father was one of those stern religion- 
ists and moralists who plainly had always held, or tried to 
hold, his two children in severest check. At the same time, as 
was obvious, this keen strident American life was calling to 
them as never had his fatherland to him. They were both 
intensely alive and eager for adventure. Never before, ap- 
parently, had they seen a reporter, never been so close to a 
really truly thrilling tragedy. And Gunda — that was my 
heroine's name — had actually been a part of it — how, she 
could now scarcely think. Her parents were not at all stirred 
by her triumph or the publicity that attached to it. In spite 
of the fact that her father owned this property and was 
sufficiently well-placed to maintain her in school or idleness 
(American style), she was already a clerk in one of the 
great stores of the city, and her sister was also preparing to go 
to work, having just left school. 

I cannot tell how, but in a few moments we three were en- 
gaged in a most ardent conversation. There was an old fire- 
place in this house with some blazing wood in it, and before 
this we sat and laughed and chattered, while I explained 
just what was wanted. Their mother and father did not 
even remain in the room. I could see that the younger sister 
was for urging Gunda on to any gayety or flirtation, and was 
herself eager to share in one. It ended by my suggesting that 
they both come down to dinner with me some evening — a 
suggestion which they welcomed with enthusiasm but ex- 
plained that it would have to be done under the rose. Their 
father was so old-fashioned that he would not allow them to 
take up with any one so swiftly, would not even allow them 
to have any beaux in the house. But they could meet me, and 
stay in town all night with friends. Gunda laughed, and the 
younger sister clapped her hands for joy. 

I made a most solemn statement of what was wanted to the 
parents, secured two photographs of Gunda, and departed, 
having arranged to see them the following Wednesday at 
seven at one of the prominent corners of the city. 



CHAPTER LI 

Concerning these two girls and their odd, unsophisticated, 
daring point of view and love of life, I have always had the 
most confused feelings. They were crazy and starving for 
something different from what they knew. What had become 
of all the staid and dull sobriety of their parents in this queer 
American atmosphere? The old people had no interest in 
or patience with any such restlessness. As for their two girls, 
it would have been as easy to seduce one or both of them, in 
the happy, seeking mood in which they met me, as to step 
off a car. Plainly they liked me, both of them. My conquest 
was so easy that it detracted from the charm. The weaker 
sex, in youth at least, has to be sought to be worth while. I 
began to question whether .1 should proceed in this matter 
as fast as they seemed to wish. 

Now that they had made friends with me, I liked them 
both. When we met the following Wednesday evening, and I 
had taken them to a commonplace restaurant, I was a little 
puzzled to know what to do with them, rarely having a whole 
evening to myself. Finally I invited them to my room, won- 
dering if they would come. It seemed a great adventure to 
me, most daring, but I could not quite make up my mind 
which of the two I preferred. Just the same they came with 
me, looking on the proceeding as a great and delicious adven- 
ture. As we came along Broadway in the dark after dinner 
they hung on my arms, laughing and jesting at what their 
parents would think, and when we went up the dimly lighted 
stair, an old, wide, squeaky flight, they chortled over the fun 
and mystery of it all. The room was nothing much — the same 
old books, hangings and other trifles — but it seemed to please 
them greatly. What pleased them most was the fact that 
one could go and come without attracting any attention. 
They browsed about at first, and I, never having been con- 

336 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 337 

fronted by just this situation before and being still backward, 
did little or nothing save discuss generalities. The one I 
had most favored (the heroine) was more retiring than the 
younger, less feverish but still gay. I could only be with 
them from seven to ten-thirty, but they intimated that they 
would come again when they could stay as late as I chose. 
The suggestion was too obvious and I lost interest. Soon I 
told them I had to go back to the office and took them to a 
car. A few days later I took the medal to Gunda at the store, 
where she received it with much pleasure, asking where I had 
been and when she was to see me again. I made an appoint- 
ment for another day, which I never kept. It meant, as I 
reasoned it out, that I should have to go further with her and 
her sister, but not being sufficiently impelled or courageous I 

dropped the whole matter. Then, because Miss W now 

seemed more significant than ever, I returned to her with a 
fuller devotion than ever before. 

Owing to a driving desire to get on, to do something, to 
be more than I was and have all the pleasures I craved at once, 
there now set in a period of mental dissatisfaction and unrest 
which eventually took me out of St. Louis and the West, and 
resulted in a period of stress and distress. Sometimes I 
really believe that certain lives are predestined to undergo 
a given group of experiences, else why the unconscionable 
urge to move and be away which drives some people like the 
cuts of a lash ? Aside from the question of salary, there was, 
as I see it now, little reason for the fierce and gnawing pains 
that assailed me, and toward the last even this question of 
salary was not a factor ; for my employers, learning that I 
was about to leave, were quick enough to offer me more money 
as well as definite advancement. By then, however, my 
self-dissatisfaction had become so great that nothing short of 
a larger salary and higher position than they could afford to 
give me would have detained me. Toward the last I seemed 
to be obsessed by the idea of leaving St. Louis and going 
East. New York — or, at least other cities east of this one, 
seemed to call me far more than anything the West had to 
offer. 



338 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

And now, curiously, various things seemed to combine to 
drive or lure me forth, things as clear in retrospect as they 
were indistinguishable and meaningless then. One of these 
forces, aside from that of being worthy of my new love and 
lifting her to some high estate which then possessed me, was 
John Maxwell who had done me such an inestimable service in 
Chicago when I was trying to break into the newspaper busi- 
ness, and who had now arrived on the scene with the hope of 
connecting with St. Louis journalism. Fat, cynical, Cyclopean 
John ! "Was ever a more Nietzschean mind in a more amiable 
body! His doctrine of ruthless progress, as I now clearly 
saw, was so tall and strident, whereas his personal modus 
operandi was so compellingly genial, human, sympathetic. He 
was forever talking about burning, slaying, shoving people 
out of one's path, doing the best thing by oneself and the like, 
while at the same time actually extending a helping hand 
to almost everybody and doing as little to advantage himself 
personally as any man I ever knew. It was all theory, plus 
an inherent desire to expound. His literary admirations 
were of a turgidly sentimental or romantic character, as, for 
instance, Jean Valjean of Les Miser ables, and the good bishop ; 
Pere Oorioi, Camille, poor Smike in Nicholas Nickleby; and, 
of all things, and yet quite like him in judgment, the various 
novels of Hall Caine (The Bondman, The Christian, The 
Deemster). 

"My boy!" he used to say to me, with a fat and yet wholly 
impressive vehemence that I could not help admiring whether 
I agreed with him or not, "that character of Jean Valjean 
is one of the greatest in the world — a masterpiece — and I'll 
tell you why — " and he would then begin to enlarge upon the 
moral beauty of Valjean carrying the wounded Marius 
through the sewer, his taking up and caring for the poor 
degraded mother, abandoned by the students of Paris, his 
gentle and forgiving attitude toward all poverty and crime. 

The amusing thing about all this was, of course, that in 
the next breath he would reiterate that all men were dogs 
and thieves, that in all cases one had to press one's advan- 
tage to the limit and trust nobody, that one must burn, cut. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 339 

slay, if one wished to succeed. Once I said to him, still under 
the delusion that the world might well be full of tenderness, 
charity, honesty and the like: "John, you don't really be- 
lieve all that. You're not as hard as you say." 

' ' The hell I 'm not ! The trouble with you is that you don 't 
know me. You're just a cub yet, Theodore," and his face 
wore that adorable, fat, cynical smirk, ' ' full of college notions 
of virtue and charity, and all that guff. You think that be- 
cause I helped you a little in Chicago all men are honest, 
kind, and true. Well, you'll have to stow that pretty soon. 
You're getting along now, and whatever you think other 
people ought to do you'll find it won't be very convenient 
to do it yourself — see?" And he smirked angelically once 
more. To me, in spite of what he said, he seemed anything 
but hard or mean. 

Being in hard lines, he had come to St. Louis, not at my 
suggestion but at that of Dunlap and Brady, both of whom no 
doubt assured him that I could secure him a position instanter. 
I began to think what if anything I could do to help him, but 
so overawed was I still by his personality that I felt that 
nothing would do for him less than a place as copy-reader or 
assistant city editor — and that was a very difficult matter 
indeed, really beyond my local influence. I was too young 
and too inexperienced to recommend anybody for such a place, 
although my Chicago friends had come to imagine that I 
could do anything here. I had the foolish notion that John 
would speak to me about it, but so sensitive was he, I pre- 
sume, on the subject of what was due from me to him that he 
thought (I am merely guessing) that I should bestir myself 
without any direct word. He had been here for days, I later 
learned, without even coming near me. He had gone to a hotel, 
and in a few days sent word by Dunlap, with whom he was 
now on the most intimate terms, that he was in town and 
looking for a place. I assume now that it was but the part of 
decency for me to have hurried to call on him, but so different 
was my position now and so hurried was I with a number of 
things that I never even thought of doing it at once. I fancied 
that he would come to the office with Dunlap, or that a day or 



340 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

two would make no difference. At the end of the second day- 
after Dunlap spoke to me of his being here the latter said: 
1 ' Don 't you want to come along with me and see John ? ' ' 

I was delighted at the invitation and that same evening 
followed Dunlap to John 's hotel room. It was a curious meet- 
ing, full of an odd diffidence on my part and I know not what 
on his. From others he had gathered the idea that I was 
successful here and therefore in a position to be uppish, 
whereas I was really in a most humble and affectionate frame 
of mind toward him. He met me with a most cynical, leering 
expression, which by no means put me at ease. He seemed 
at once reproachful, antagonistic and contemptuous. 

"Well," he began at once, "I hear you're making a big hit 
down here, Theodore. Everything's coming your way 
now, eh?" 

' ' Oh, not so good as that, John, ' ' I said. ' ' I don 't think I 've 
done so wonderfully well. I hear you want to stay here ; have 
you found anything yet?" 

"Not a thing," he smiled. "I haven't been trying very 
hard, I guess." 

I told him what I knew of St. Louis, how things went gen- 
erally, and offered to give him letters or personal introduc- 
tions to McCullagh, a managing editor on the Chronicle, to 
Wandell, and several others. He thanked me, and then I in- 
vited him to come and live in my room, which he declined at 
the time, taking instead a room next door to mine on the same 
floor — largely because it was inexpensive and central and 
not, I am sure, because it was near me. Here he stayed nearly 
a month, during which time he doubtless made efforts to find 
something to do, which I also did. Suddenly he was gone, 
and a little later, and much to my astonishment, Dunlap in- 
formed me that he had concluded that I had been instru- 
mental in keeping him from obtaining work here! This he 
had deduced not so much from anything he knew or had 
heard, but by some amazing process of reversal ; since I was 
much beholden to him and in a position to assist him, I, by 
some perversion of nature, would resent his coming and 
would do everything in my power to keep him out ! 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 341 

No event in my life ever gave me a queerer sense of being 
misunderstood and defeated. Of all the people I knew, I 
would rather have aided Maxwell than any one else. Because 
I felt so sure that I could not recommend him for anything 
good enough for him, I felt ashamed to try. I did the little 
I could, but after a while he left without bidding me good-by. 

But before he went there were many gatherings in his 
room or mine, and always he assumed the same condescending 
and bantering tone toward me that he had used in Chicago, 
which made me feel as though he thought my present stand- 
ing a little too good for me. And yet at times, in his more 
cheerful moods, he seemed the same old John, tender, ranting, 
filled with a sincere desire for the welfare of any untutored 
beginner, and only so restless and irritable now because he was 
meshed in financial difficulties. 

At that, he attempted to do me one more service, which, 
although I did not resent it very much, I completely mis- 
understood. This was in regard to Miss W , whose photo- 
graph he now saw and whose relation to me he gathered to 
be serious, although what he said related more to my whole 
future than to her. One day he walked into my room and 
saw the picture of my love hanging on the wall. He paused 
first to examine it. 

"Who's this?" he inquired curiously. 

I can see him yet, without coat or waistcoat, suspenders 
down, his fat stomach pulled in tightly by the waistband of 
his trousers, his fat face pink with health, his hair tousled on 
his fine round head. 

"That's the girl I'm engaged to," I announced proudly. 
"I'm going to marry her one of these days when I get on 
my feet." Then, lover-like, I began to expatiate on her 
charms, while he continued to study the photograph. 

' ' Have you any idea how old she is ? " he queried, looking up 
with that queer, cynical, unbelieving look of his. 

"Oh, about my age." 

1 ' Oh hell ! " he said roughly. ' ' She 's older than that. She 's 
five or six years older than you. What do you want to get 
married for anyhow? You're just a kid yet. Everything's 



342 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

before you. You're only now getting a start. Now you want 
.to go and tie yourself up so you can't move!" 

He ambled over to the window and stared out. Then he 
sank comfortably into one of my chairs, while I uttered some 
fine romantic bosh about love, a home, not wanting to wander 
around the world all my days alone. As I talked he con- 
templated me with one of those audacious smirky leers of his, 
as irritating and disconcerting an expression as I have seen 
on any face. 

"Oh hell, Theodore!" he remarked finally, as if to sweep 
away all I had said. Then after a time he added, as if address- 
ing the world in general: "If there's a bigger damn fool 
than a young newspaper man in or out of love, let me know. 
Here you are, just twenty-one, just starting out. You come 
down here from Chicago and get a little start, and the first 
thing you want to do is to load yourself up with a wife, and 
in a year or so two or three kids. Now I know damned well," 
he went on, no doubt noting the look of easy toleration on 
my part, "that what I'm going to say won't make you like 
me any better, but I'm going to say it anyhow. You're like 
all these young newspaper scouts : the moment you get a start 
you think you know it all. Well, Theodore, you've got a 
long time to live and a lot of things to learn. I had something 
to do with getting you into this game, and that's the only 
reason I 'm talking to you now. I 'd like to see you go on and 
not make a mistake. In the first place you're too young to get 
married, and in the second, as I said before, that girl is five 
years older than you if she's a day. I think she's older," 
and he went over and re-examined the picture, while I splut- 
tered, insisting that he was crazy, that she was no more than 
two years older if so much. "Along with this," he went on, 
completely ignoring my remarks, "she's one of these middle- 
West girls, all right for life out here but no good for the news- 
paper game or you. I've been through all that myself. Just 
remember, my boy, that I'm ten years older than you. She 
belongs to some church, I suppose?" 

"Methodist," I replied ruefully. 

"I knew it! But I'm not knocking her; I'm not saying 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 343 

that she isn't pretty and virtuous, but I do say that she's older 
than you, and narrow. Why, man, you don 't know your own 
mind yet. You don't know where you'll want to go or what 
you'll want to do. In ten years from now you'll be thirty-two, 
and she '11 be thirty-seven or more, believing and feeling things 
that will make you tired. You'll never agree with her — or if 
you do, so much the worse for you. What she wants is a home 
and children and a steady provider, and what you really 
want is freedom to go and do as you please, only you don't 
know it. 

"Now I've watched you, Theodore, and I hear what people 
down here say about you, and I think you have something 
ahead of you if you don't make a fool of yourself. But if 
you marry now — and a conventional and narrow woman at 
that, one older than you — you're gone. She'll cause you end- 
less trouble. In three or four years you'll have children, and 
you '11 get a worried, irritated point of view. Take my advice. 
Run with girls if you want to, but don't marry. Now I've 
said my say, and you can do as you damned please." 

He smirked genially and condescendingly once more, and 
I felt very much impressed and put down. After all, I feared, 
in spite of my slushy mood, that what he said was true, that it 
would be best for me to devote myself solely to work and 
study and let women alone. But also I knew that I couldn't. 

The next time my beloved came to the city I decided to 
sound her on the likelihood of my changing, differing. We 
were walking along a leaf-strewn street, the red, brown, yellow 
and green leaves thick on the brick walk, of a gray November 
afternoon. 

"And what would you do then?" I asked, referring to my 
fear of changing, not caring for her any longer. 

She meditated for a while, kicking the leaves and staring at 
the ground without looking up. Finally she surveyed me with 
clear appealing blue-gray eyes. 

"But you won't," she said. "Let's not think of anything 
like that any more. We won 't, will we ? " 

Her tone was so tender and appealing that it moved me 
tremendously. She had this power over me, and retained it 



344 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

for years, of appealing to my deepest emotions. I felt so 
sorry for her — for life — even then. It was as if all that 
Maxwell had said was really true. She was different, older; 
she might never understand me. But this craving for her — 
what to do about that? All love, the fiercest passions, might 
cool and die out, but how did that help me then? In the 
long future before me should I not regret having given her up, 
never to have carried to fruition this delicious fever ? I 
thought so. 

For weeks thereafter my thoughts were colored by the truth 
of all John had said. She would never give herself to me with- 
out marriage, and here I was, lonely and financially unable 
to take her, and spiritually unable to justify my marriage to 
her even if I were. The tangle of life, its unfairness and in- 
difference to the moods and longings of any individual, swept 
over me once more, weighing me down far beyond the power 
of expression. I felt like one condemned to carry a cross, and 
very unwilling and unhappy in doing it. The delirious pain- 
ful meetings went on and on. I suffered untold tortures 
from my desires and my dreams. And they were destined 
never to be fulfilled. . . . Glorious fruit that hangs upon 
the vine too long, and then decays ! 

Another thing that happened at this time and made a 
great impression, tending more firmly than even Maxwell's 
remarks to alter my point of view and make me feel that I 
must leave St. Louis and go on, was the arrival in the city 
of my brother Paul, who, as the star of a claptrap melodrama 
entitled "The Danger Signal," now put in an appearance. 
He was one of my four brothers now out in the world making 
their own way and of them all by far the most successful. I 
had not seen him since my newspaper days in Chicago two 
years before. He was then in another play, "The Tin Sol- 
dier," by the reigning farceur, Hoyt. His had not been 
the leading role at that time, but somehow his skill as a 
comedian had pushed him into that role. Previously he had 
leading parts in such middle-class plays as "A Midnight 
Bell," "The Two Johns" and other things of that sort, as 
well as being an end man in several famous minstrel shows. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 345 

Now in this late November or early December, walking 
along South Sixth Street in the region of the old Havlin 
Theater, where all the standard melodramas of the time 
played, I was startled to see his face and name staring at 
me from a billboard. ' ' Ah, ' ' I thought, ' ' my famous brother ! 
Now these people will know whether our family amounts to 
anything or not ! Wait '11 they hear he is my brother ! ' ' 

His picture on the billboard recalled so many pleasant mem- 
ories of him, his visits home, his kindness to and intense love 
for my mother, how in my tenth year he had talked of my 
being a writer (Heaven only knows why), and how once on 
one of his visits home, when I was fourteen, he had set me 
to the task of composing a humorous essay which he felt sure 
I could write ! Willingly and singingly I essayed it, but when 
I chose the ancient topic of the mule and its tendency to kick 
his face fell, and he tried to show me in the gentlest way pos- 
sible how hackneyed that was and to put me on the track of 
doing something original. . . . Now after all this time, 
and scarcely knowing whether or not he knew I was here, I 
was to see him once more, to make clear to him my worldly 
improvement. I do not say it to boast, but I honestly think 
there was more joy in the mere thought of seeing him again 
than there was in showing him off and getting a little per- 
sonal credit because of his success. 



CHAPTER LII 

As I look back upon my life now I realize clearly that of all 
the members of our family subsequent to my mother's death, 
the only one who, without quite understanding me, still sympa- 
thized with my intellectual and artistic point of view — and 
that most helpfully and at times practically — was my brother 
Paul. Despite the fact that all my other brothers were much 
better able intellectually than he to appreciate the kind of 
thing I was tending toward mentally, his was the sympathy 
that buoyed me up. I do not think he understood, even in 
later years (long after I had written Sister Carrie, for in- 
stance), what I was driving at. His world was that of the 
popular song, the middle-class actor or comedian, the middle- 
class comedy, and such humorous esthetes of the writing world 
as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, and the authors of the 
Spoopendyke Papers and Samantha at Saratoga. As far as I 
could make out — and I say this in no lofty, condescending 
spirit — he was full of simple middle-class romance, middle- 
class humor, middle-class tenderness, and middle-class gross- 
ness — all of which I am very free to say I admire. After all, 
we cannot all be artists, statesmen, generals, thieves or finan- 
ciers. Some of us, the large majority, have to be just plain 
everyday middle-class, and a very comfortable state it is under 
any decent form of government. 

But there is so very much more to be said of him, things 
which persistently lift him in my memory to a height far 
more appealing and important than hundreds of greater and 
surer fame. For my brother was a humorist of so tender and 
delicate a mold that to speak of him as a mere middle-class 
artist or middle-class thinker and composer, would be to do 
him a gross injustice and miss the entire significance and 
flavor of his being. His tenderness and sympathy, a very 
human appreciation of the weakness and errors as well as the 

346 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 347 

toils and tribulations of most of us, was his most outstanding 
and engaging quality and gave him a very definite force and 
charm. Admitting that he had an intense, possibly an undue 
fondness for women (I have never been able to discover just 
where the dividing line is to be drawn in such matters), a 
frivolous, childish, horse-play sense of humor at times, still 
he had other qualities that were positively adorable. That 
sunny disposition, that vigorous, stout body and nimble mind, 
those smiling sweet blue eyes, that air of gayety and well- 
being that was with him nearly all the time, even at the most 
trying times! Life seemed to bubble in him. Hope sprang 
upward like a fountain. You felt in him a capacity to do (in 
his limited field), an ability to achieve, whether he was suc- 
ceeding at the moment or not. Never having the least power 
to interpret anything in a high musical way, still he was 
always full of music of a tender, sometimes sad, sometimes 
gay kind, the ballad-maker of a nation. For myself, I was 
always fascinated by this skill of his, the lovable art that 
attempts to interpret sorrow and pleasure in terms of song, 
however humble. And on the stage, how, in a crude way, by 
mere smile and gesture, he could make an audience laugh ! 
I have seen houses crowded to the ceiling with middle- or 
lower-class people, shop girls and boys, factory hands and 
the like, who tittered continuously at his every move. He 
seemed to radiate a kind of comforting sunshine and humor 
without a sharp edge or sting (satire was entirely beyond 
him), a kind of wilding asininity, your true clown in cap and 
bells, which caused even my morbid soul to chortle by the hour. 
Already he was a composer of a certain type of melodramatic 
and tearful yet land-sweeping songs (The Letter That Never 
Came, The Pardon Came Too Late, I Believe It for My 
Mother Told Me So, The Bowery). (Let those who wish to 
know him better read of him in Twelve Men: My Brother 
Paul.) 

"Well, this was my brother Paul, the same whom I have 
described as stout, gross, sensual, and all of these qualities 
went hand-in-hand. I have no time here for more than the 
briefest glimpse, the faintest echo. I should like to write 



348 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

a book about him — the wonderful, the tender! But now he 
was coming to St. Louis, and in my youthful, vainglorious 
way I was determined to show him what I was. He should 
be introduced to Peter, Dick and Rodenberger, my cronies. 
I would have a feast in my room after the theater in his honor. 
I would give another, a supper at Faust's, then the leading 
restaurant of St. Louis, of a gay Bohemian character, and 
invite Wandell, Dunlap, my managing editor (I can never 
think of his name), Bassford, the dramatic editor, and Peter, 
Dick and Rodenberger. I proposed to bring my love to his 
theater some afternoon or evening and introduce him to her. 

I hurried to the office of the Globe to find Dick and Peter 
and tell them my news and plans. They were very much for 
whatever it was I wanted to do, and eager to meet Paul of 
course. Also, within the next twenty-four hours I had written 

to Miss W , and told Wandell, Bassford, the managing 

editor and nearly everybody else. I dropped in at Faust's 
to get an estimate on the kind of dinner I thought he would 
like, having the head-waiter plan it for me, and then eagerly 
awaited his arrival. 

Sunday morning came, and I called at the theater at about 
eleven, and found him on the stage of this old theater entirely 
surrounded by trunks and scenery. There was with him at the 
moment a very petite actress, the female star of the company, 
who, as I later learned, was one of his passing flames. He 
was stout as ever, and dressed in the most engaging Broadway 
fashion : a suit of good cloth and smart cut, a fur coat, a high 
hat and a gold-headed cane — in short, all the earmarks of 
prosperity and comfort. What a wonderful thing he and this 
stage world, even this world of claptrap melodrama, seemed 
to me at the time. I felt on the instant somehow as though 
I were better established in the world than I thought, to be 
thus connected with one who traveled all over the country. 
The whole world seemed to come closer because of him. 

"Hello!" he called, plainly astonished. " Where 'd you 
come from?" and then seeing that I was better dressed and 
poised mentally than he had ever known me, he looked me 
over in an odd, slightly doubting way, as a stranger might, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 349 

and then introduced me to his friend. Seeing him apparently- 
pleased by my arrival and eager to talk with me, she quickly 
excused herself, saying she had to go on to her hotel; then 
he fell to asking me questions as to how I came to be here, how 
I was getting along. I am sure he was slightly puzzled and 
possibly disturbed by my sharp change from a shy, retiring 
boy to one who examined him with the chill and weighing eye 
of the newspaper man. To me, all of a sudden, he was not 
merely one whom I had to like because he was my brother 
or one who knew more about life than I — rather less, I now 
thought, quickly gathering his intellectual import, but be- 
cause of his character solely. I might like or dislike that as 
I chose. He reminded me now a great deal of my mother, 
and I could not help recalling how loving and generous he had 
always been with her. Instantly he appealed to me as the 
simple, home-loving mother-boy that he was. It brought him 
so close to me that I was definitely and tenderly drawn 
to him. I could feel how fine and generous he really was. 
Even then although I doubt very much whether he liked me 
at first, finding me so brash and self-sufficient, still, so simple 
and communistic were the laws by which his charming mind 
worked, he at once accepted me as a part of the family and 
so of himself, a brother, one of mother's boys. How often 
have I heard him say in regard to some immediate relative con- 
cerning whom an acrimonious debate might be going forward, 
"After all, he's your brother, isn't he?" or "She's your sis- 
ter," as though mere consanguinity should dissolve all dis- 
satisfactions and rages! Isn't there something humanly 
sweet about that, in the face of all the cold, decisive conclu- 
sions of this world? 



CHAPTER LIII 

Well, such was my brother Paul and now he was here. 
Never before was he so much my dear brother as now. So 
generally admirable was 'he that I should have liked him 
quite as much had he been no relative. After a few moments 
of explanation as to my present state I offered to share my 
room with him for the period of his stay, but he declined. 
Then I offered to take him to lunch, but he was too hurried 
or engaged. He agreed to come to my room after the show, 
however, and offered me a box for myself and my new friends. 
So much faith did I have in the good sense of Peter, Dick 
and Rodenberger, their certainty of appreciating the charm 
of a man like Paul, that I brought them to the theater this 
same night, although I knew the show itself must be a mess. 
There was a scenic engine in this show, with a heroine lying 
across the rails ! My dear brother was a comic switchman or 
engineer in this act, evoking roars of low-brow laughter by 
his antics and jokes. 

I shall never forget how my three friends took all this. 
Now that he was actually here they were good enough to take 
him into their affectionate consideration on my account, al- 
most as though he belonged to them. He was " Dreiser's 
brother Paul," even "Dear old Paul" afterwards. Because 
working conditions favored us that night we all three de- 
scended on the Havlin together, sitting in the box while the 
show was in progress but spending all the intermissions in 
Paul's dressingroom or on the back of the stage. Having 
overcome his first surprise and possibly dislike of my brash 
newspaper manner, he was now all smiles and plainly delighted 
with my friends, Rodenberger and Peter, especially the latter, 
appealing to him as characters not unlike himself, indi- 
viduals whom he could understand. And in later years, 
when I was in New York, he was always asking after them 

350 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 351 

and singing their praises. Dick also came in for a share of 
his warm affection, but in a slower way. He thought Dick 
amusing but queer, like a strange animal of some kind. On 
subsequent tours which took him to St. Louis he was always 
in touch with these three. Above all things, the waggish 
grotesqueries of McCord's mind moved him immensely. 
Peter's incisive personality and daring unconventionality 
seemed to fascinate Paul. "Wonderful boy, that," he used 
to say to me, almost as though he were confiding a deep secret. 
"You'll hear from him yet, mark my word. You can't lose a 
kid like that." And time proved quite plainly that he was 
right. 

During the play Paul sang one of his own compositions, 
The Bowery. It was an exceptional comic song, quite destruc- 
tive of the good name of the Bowery forever, so much so that 
ten years later the merchants and property owners of that 
famous thoroughfare petitioned to have the name of the 
street changed, on the ground that the jibes involved in the 
song had destroyed its character as an honest business street 
forever. So much for the import of a silly ballad, and the 
passing song-writer. What are the really powerful things 
in this world anyhow? 

After the show we all adjourned to some scowsy music 
hall in the vicinity of this old theater, which Dick insisted 
by reason of its very wretchedness would amuse Paul, although 
I am sure it did not (he was never a satirist). And thence to 
my room, where I had the man who provided the midnight 
lunch for the workers at the Globe spread a small feast. I 
had no piano, but Paul sang, and Peter gave an imitation of 
a street player who could manipulate at one and the same time 
a drum, mouth-organ and accordion. We had to beat my good 
brother on the back to keep him from choking. 

But it was during a week of breakfasts together that the 
first impressive conversations in regard to New York oc- 
curred, conversations that finally imbued me with the feeling 
that I should never be quite satisfied until I had reached 
there. Whether this was due to the fact that I now told him 
about my present state and ambitions or dreams and my some- 



352 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

what remarkable success here, or that he was now coming to 
the place where he was able to suggest ways and means and at 
the same time indulge the somewhat paternalistic streak in 
himself, I do not know, but during the week he persisted in 
the most florid descriptions of New York and my duty to go 
there, its import to me intellectually and otherwise ; and finally 
he convinced me that I should never reach my true intellectual 
stature unless I did. Other places might be very good, he 
insisted, they all had their value, but there was only one place 
where one might live in a keen and vigorous way, and that 
was New York. It was the city, the only cosmopolitan city, 
a wonder-world in itself. It was great, wonderful, marvelous, 
the size, the color, the tang, the beauty. 

He went on to explain that the West was narrow, slow, not 
really alive. In New York one might always do, think and act 
more freely than anywhere else. The air itself was tonic. 
All really ambitious people, people who were destined to do 
or be anything, eventually drifted there — editors, newspaper 
men, actors, playwrights, song-writers, musicians, money- 
makers. He pointed to himself as a case in point, how he had 
ventured there, a gawky stripling doing a monologue, and 
how one Harry Minor, now of antique "Bowery Theater" 
fame, had seized on him, carried him along and forwarded him 
in every way. Some one was certain to do as much for me, 
for any one of ability. In passing, he now confided that only 
recently, from having been the star song-writer for a well- 
known New York music publisher (Willis Woodward), he had 
succeeded, with two other men, in organizing a music pub- 
lishing company in which he had a third interest, and which 
was to publish his songs as well as those of others and was 
pledged to pay him an honest royalty (a thing which he in- 
sisted had not so far been done) as well as a full share as 
partner. In addition, under the friendly urging of an am- 
bitious manager, he was now writing a play, to be known as 
"The Green Goods Man," in which within a year or two he 
would appear as star. Also he reminded me that our sister 

E , who had long since moved to New York (as early as 

1885), was now living in West Fifteenth Street, where she 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 353 

would be glad to receive me. He was always in New York 
in the summer, living with this sister. "Why not come down 
there next summer when I am there off the road, and look it 
over?" 

As he talked, New York came nearer than ever it had be- 
fore, and I could see the light of conviction and enthusiasm 
in his eye. It was plain, now that he had seen me again, that 
he wanted me to succeed. My friends had already sung my 
praises to him, although he himself could see that I was fast 
emerging from my too shy youth. St. Louis might be well 
enough, and Chicago — but New York! New York! One who 
had not seen it but who was eager to see the world could not 
help but sniff and prick up his ears. 

It was during this week that I gave the supper previously 
mentioned, and took my fiancee to meet my brother. I am 
satisfied that she liked him, or was rather amused by him, not 
understanding the least detail of his life or the character of 
the stage, while the sole comment that I could get out of him 
was that she was charming but that if he were in my place 
he would not think of marrying yet — a statement which had 
more light thrown on it years later by his persistent indiffer- 
ence to if not dislike of her, although he was always too cour- 
teous and mindful of others to express himself openly to me. 
. . . All of which is neither here nor there. 

My glorious supper turned out to be somewhat of a failure. 
Without knowing it, I was trying to harmonize elements which 
would not mix, at least not on such a short notice. The true 
Bohemianism and at the same time exclusive camaraderie of 
such youths as Peter, Dick and Eodenberger, and the rather 
stilted intellectual sufficiency of my editorial friends and 
superiors of the Republic, and the utter innocence and naivete 
of Paul himself, proved too much. The dinner was stilted, 
formal, boring. My dear brother was as barren of intellectual 
interests as a child. No current problem such as might have 
interested these editorial men had the smallest interest for 
him or had ever been weighed by him. He could not discuss 
them, although I fancy if we had turned to prize-fighters or 
baseball heroes or comic characters in general he would have 



354 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

done well enough. Indeed his and their thoughts were so far 
apart that they found him all but dull. On the other hand, 
Peter, Dick and Rodenberger finding Paul delightful were 
not in the least interested in the others, looking upon them as 
executives and of no great import. Between these groups I 
was lost, not knowing how to harmonize them. Struck all at 
once by the ridiculousness and futility of my attempt, I could 
not talk gayly or naturally, and the more I tried to bring 
things round the worse they became. Finally I was on pins 
and needles, until the whole thing was saved by Wandell re- 
membering early that he had something to do at the office. 
Seizing their opportunity, the managing editor and the dra- 
matic editor went with him. The others and I now attempted 
to rally, but it was too late. A half hour later we broke up, 
and I accompanied my brother to his hotel door. He made 
none but pleasant comments, but it was all such a fizzle that I 
could have wept. 

By Sunday morning he was gone again, and then my life 
settled into its old routine, apparently — only it did not. Now 
more than ever I felt myself to be a flitting figure in this inter- 
esting but humdrum local world, comfortable enough perhaps 
but with no significant future for me. The idea of New York 
as a great and glowing center had taken root. 

Some other things tended to move me from St. Louis. Only 
recently Michaelson, who had come to St. Louis to obtain my 
aid in securing a place, had been harping on the advantage 
of being a country editor, the ease of the life, its security. He 
was out of work and eager to leave the city. I think he was 
convinced that I was financially in a position to buy a half 
interest in some fairly successful country paper (which I 
was not), while he took the other half interest on time. Any- 
way I had been thinking of this as a way of getting out of 
the horrible grind of newspaperdom ; only this mood of my 
brother seemed to reach down to the very depths of my being, 
depths hitherto not plumbed by anything, and put New York 
before me as a kind of ultimate certainty. I must go there 
at some time or other! meanwhile it might be a good thing 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 355 

for me to run a country paper. It might make me some 
money, give me station and confidence. . . . 

At the same time, in the face of my growing estimate of 
myself, backed by the plaudits of such men as Peter and 
Dick (who were receiving twice my salary), to say nothing of 
the assurance of my brother that I had that mysterious thing, 
personality, I was always cramped for cash, and there was 
no sign on the part of my employers that I would ever be 
worth very much more to them. Toward the very last, as I 
have said, they changed, but then it was too late. I might 
write and write, page specials every week, assignments of all 
kinds, theatrical and sport reviews at times — and still, after 
all the evidence that I could be of exceptional service to them, 
twenty-two or -three dollars was all I could get. And dog- 
ging my heels was Michaelson, a cheerful, comforting soul in 
the main, but a burden. It has always been a matter of 
great interest to me to observe how certain types, parasites, 
barnacles, decide that they are to be aided or strengthened 
by another, and without a "by-your-leave" or any other form 
or courtesy to "edge in," bring their trunk, and make them- 
selves at home. Although I never really liked Michaelson 
very much, here he was, idling about, worrying about a job 
or his future, living in my room toward the last, eating his 
meals (at least his breakfasts) with me, and talking about 
the country, the charm, ease and profit of editing a country 
newspaper ! 

Now, of all the people in this dusty world, I can imagine no 
one less fitted than myself, temperamentally or in any other 
way, to edit a country paper. The intellectual limitations of 
such a world ! My own errant disposition and ideas, my con- 
tempt for and revolt against the standardized and clock-work 
motions and notions of the average man and woman ! In six 
months I should have been arrested or drummed out by the 
preacher, the elders, and all the other worthies for miles 
around. Let sleeping dogs lie. The louder all conventional- 
ists snore the better — for me anyhow. 

But here I was listening to Michaelson 's silly drivel and 



356 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

wondering if a country newspaper might not offer an escape 
from the humdrum and clamlike existence into which I 
seemed to have fallen. From December on this cheerful medi- 
ocrity, of about the warmth and intelligence of a bright collie, 
was telling me daily how wonderful I was and that I ' ' ought 
to get out of here and into something which would really 
profit me and get me somewhere" — into the editorship of a 
country weekly ! 

What jocular fates trifled with my sense of the reasonable 
or the ridiculous at this time I do not know, but I was inter- 
ested — largely, I presume, because I was too wandering and 
nebulous to think of anything else to do. This cheerful soul 
finally ended by indicating a paper — the Weekly Something 
of Grand Rapids, Ohio (not Michigan), near his father's farm 
(see pp. 247-255, A Hoosier Holiday), which, according to 
him, was just the thing and should offer a complete solution 
for all our material and social aspirations in this world. By 
way of this paper, or some other of its kind, one might rise 
to any height, political or social, state or national. I might 
become a state assemblyman from my county, a senator, a 
congressman, or United States senator ! When you owned a 
country paper you were an independent person (imagine the 
editor of a country paper being independent of the conven- 
tions of his community ! ) , not a poor harried scribe on a city 
paper, uncertain from week to week whether you were to be 
retained any longer. There were the delights of a country life, 
the sweet simplicity of a country town, away from the noise 
and streets and gaudy, shabby nothingness of a great city. 
. . . As I listened to the picture of his native town, his 
father 's farm, the cows, pigs, chickens, how we could go there 
and live for a while, my imagination mounted to a heaven 
of unadulterated success, peace, joy. In my mind I had al- 
ready rented or bought a small vine-clad cottage in Grand 
Rapids, Ohio, where, according to Michaelson, was a wonder- 
ful sparkling rapids to be seen glimmering in the moonlight, 
a railroad which went into Toledo within an hour, fertile farm- 
land all about, both gas and oil recently struck, making the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 357 

farmers prosperous and therefore in the mood for a first- 
class newspaper such as we would edit. Imagine sparkling 
rapids glimmering in the moonlight listed as a financial asset 
of a country paper ! 



CHAPTER LIV 

My thoughts being now turned, if vaguely, to the idea of 
rural life and editing a country newspaper, although I really 
did not believe that I could succeed at that, I talked and 
talked, to Michaelson, to my future wife, to Dick and Peter, in 
a roundabout, hinting way, developing all sorts of theories as 
to the possible future that awaited me. To buoy up my faith 
in myself, I tried to make Miss W feel that I was a per- 
sonage and would do great things. . . . How nature 
would ever get on without total blindness, or at least immense 
credulity on the part of its creatures, I cannot guess. Cer- 
tainly if women in their love period had any more sense than 
the men they would not be impressed with the boshy dreams 
of such swains as myself. Either they cannot help themselves 
or they must want to believe. Nature must want them to 
believe. How the woman who married me could have been 
impressed by my faith in myself at this period is beyond my 
reasoning, and yet she was impressed, or saw nothing better 
in store for her than myself. 

That she was so impressed, and that I, moved by her affec- 
tion for me or my own desire to possess her, was impelled to 
do something to better my condition, was obvious. Hints 
thrown out at the Republic office, to my sponsor "Wandell in 
particular, that I might leave producing nothing, I decided 
sometime during January and February, 1893, to take up 
Michaelson's proposition, although I did not see how, other 
than by gross luck, it could come to anything. Neither of us 
had any money to speak of, and yet we were planning to buy 
a country newspaper. For a few days before starting we de- 
bated this foolish matter and then I sent him to his home town 
to look over the field there and report, which he immediately 
did, writing most glowing accounts of an absolutely worth- 
less country paper there, which he was positive we could 

358 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 359 

secure for a song and turn into a paying proposition at 
once. I cannot say that I believed this, and yet I went 
because I felt the need of something different. And all 
the time the tug of that immense physical desire toward my 
beloved which, were there any such thing as sanity in life, 
might have been satisfied without any great blow to society, 
was holding me as by hooks of steel. It was this conflict be- 
tween the need to go and the wish to stay that tortured me. 
Yet I went. I had the pain of separating from her in this 
mood, realizing that yputh was slipping away, that in the 
uncertainty of all things there might never be a happy frui- 
tion to our love (arid there was not). And yet I went. 

I bade her a final farewell the Sunday night before my 
departure. I hinted at all sorts of glorious achievements as 
well as all possible forms of failure. Lover-wise, I was tre- 
mendously impressed with the sterling worth and connections 
of this girl, the homely, conventional and prosaic surround- 
ings. My unfitness for fulfilling her dreams tortured me. As 
I could plainly see, she was for life as it had been lived by 
billions, by those who interpret it as a matter of duty, sim- 
plicity, care and thrift. I think she saw before her a modest 
home in which would be children, enough money to clothe 
them decently, enough money to entertain a few friends, and 
eventually to die and be buried respectably. On the other 
hand, I was little more than a pulsing force, with no convic- 
tions, no definite theories or plans. In my sky the latest cloud 
of thought or plan was the great thing. Not I but destiny, 
over which I had no control, had me in hand. I felt, or 
thought I felt, the greatest love . . . while within me was 
a voice which said: "What a liar! What a pretender! You 
will satisfy yourself, make your own way as best you can. 
Each new day will be a clean slate for you, no least picture of 
the past thereon — none, at least, which might not be quickly 
wiped away. Any beautiful woman would satisfy you." 
Still I suffered torture for her and myself, and left the next 
day, lacerated by the postponement, the defeated desire for 
happiness in love. 

My attitude on leaving the Republic was one of complete 



360 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

indifference, coupled with a kind of satisfaction at the last 
moment that, after having seemed previously totally indiffer- 
ent to my worth, the city editor, the managing editor, and 
even the publisher, seemed suddenly to feel that if I could be 
induced to stay I might prove of greater value to them than 
thus far I had — from a cash point of view. And so they 
made a hearty if belated effort to detain me. Indeed on my 
very sudden announcement only a few days before my depar- 
ture that I was going, my city editor expressed great regret, 
asked me not to act hastily, told me he proposed to speak to 
the editor-in-chief. But this did not interest me any more. I 
was down on the Republic for the way it had treated me. 
Why hadn't they done something for me months ago? That 
afternoon as I was leaving the building on an assignment, the 
managing editor caught me and wanted to know of my plans, 
said if I would stay he believed that soon a better place in 
the editorial department could be made for me. Having 
already written Michaelson that I would soon join him, how- 
ever, I now felt it impossible not to leave. The truth is I 
really wanted to go and now that I had brought myself to this 
point, I did not want to retreat. Besides, there was a satis- 
faction in refusing these belated courtesies. The editor said 
that if I were really going the publisher would be glad to give 
me a general letter of introduction which might stand me in 
good stead in other cities. True enough, on the Monday on 
which I left, having gone to the office to say farewell, I was 
met by the publisher, who handed me a letter of introduction. 
It was of the ■ ' To whom it might concern ' ' variety and related 
my labors and capacities in no vague words. I might have 
used this letter to advantage in many a strait, but never did. 
Rather, by some queer inversion of thought, I concluded that it 
was somewhat above my capacity, said more for me than I 
deserved, and might secure for me some place which I could 
not fill. For over a year I carried it about in my pocket, often 
when I was without a job and with only a few dollars in my 
pockets, and still I did not use it. Why, I have often won- 
dered since. Little as I should understand such a thing in 
another, so little do I now understand this in myself. 






CHAPTER LV 

That evening at seven I carried my bags down to the great 
Union Station, feeling that I was a failure. Other men had 
money; they need not thus go jerking about the world seek- 
ing a career. So many youths and maids had all that was 
needful to their ease and comfort arranged from the beginning. 
They did not need to fret about the making of a bare living. 
The ugly favoritism of life which piles comforts in the laps 
of some while snatching the smallest crumb of satisfaction 
from the lips of others was never more apparent to me. I was 
in a black despair, and made short work of getting into my 
berth. For a long time I stared at dark fields flashing by, 
punctuated by lamps in scattered cottages, the gloomy and 
lonely little towns of Illinois and Indiana. Then I slept. 

I was aroused by a ray of sunshine in my eyes. I lifted 
one of my blinds and saw the cornfields of Northern Ohio, the 
brown stumps of last year 's crop protruding through the snow. 
Commonplace little towns, the small brown or red railway 
stations with the adjoining cattle-runs, and tall gas- well der- 
ricks protruding out of dirty, snowless soil, made me realize 
that I was approaching the end of my journey. I found that 
I had ample time to shave, dress and breakfast in the adjoin- 
ing buffet — a thing I proposed to do if it proved the last pre- 
tentious, liberal, courageous deed of my life. 

For I was not too well provided with cash, and was I not 
leaving civilization? Though I had but a hundred dollars, 
might not my state soon be much worse ? I have often smiled 
since over the awe in which I then held the Pullman car, its 
porter, conductor, and all that went with it. To my inexperi- 
enced soul it seemed to be the acme of elegance and grandeur. 
Could life offer anything more than the privilege of riding 
about the world in these mobile palaces ? And here was I this 
sunny winter morning with enough money to indulge in a 

361 



362 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

breakfast in one of these grand ambling chambers, though if 
I kept up this reckless pace there was no telling where I 
should end. 

I selected a table adjoining one at which sat two drummers 
who talked of journeys far and wide, of large sales of binders 
and reapers and the condition of trade. They seemed to me to 
be among the most fortunate of men, high up in the world as 
positions go, able to steer straight and profitable courses for 
themselves. Because they had half a broiled spring chicken, 
I had one, and coffee and rolls and French fried potatoes, as 
did they, feeling all the while that I was indulging in limitless 
grandeur. At one station at which the train stopped some 
poor-looking farmer boys in jeans and "galluses" and 
wrinkled hats looking up at me with interest as I ate, I 
stared down at them, hoping that I should be taken for a 
millionaire to whom this was little more than a wearisome 
commonplace. I felt fully capable of playing the part and 
so gave the boys a cold and repressive glance, as much as to 
say, Behold ! I assured myself that the way to establish my 
true worth was to make every one else feel small by com- 
parison. 

The town of Grand Rapids lay in the extreme northwestern 
portion of Ohio on the Maumee, a little stream which begins 
somewhere west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and runs northeast 
to Toledo, emptying into Lake Erie. The town was traversed 
by this one railroad, which began at St. Louis and ended at 
Toledo, and consisted of a number of small frame houses and 
stores, with a few brick structures of one and two stories. I 
had not arranged with Michaelson that he should meet me at 
any given time, having been uncertain as to the time of my 
departure from St. Louis, and so I had to look him up. As 
I stepped down at the little depot I noted the small houses 
with snow-covered yards, the bare trees and the glimpse of 
rolling country which I caught through the open spaces be- 
tween. There was the river, wide and shallow, flowing directly 
through the heart of the town and tumbling rapidly and pic- 
turesquely over gray stones. I was far more concerned as to 
whether I should sometime be able to write a poem or a story 






A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 363 

about this river than I was to know if a local weekly could 
subsist here. And after the hurry and bustle of St. Louis, the 
town did not impress me. I felt now that I had made a 
dreadful mistake and wondered why I had been so foolish as 
to give up the opportunities suggested by my friends on the 
Republic, and my sweetheart, when I might have remained 
and married her under the new editorial conditions prof- 
fered me. 

Yet I walked on to the main corner and inquired where my 
friend lived, then out a country road indicated to me as lead- 
ing toward his home. I found an old rambling frame house, 
facing the Maumee River, with a lean-to and kitchen and 
springhouse, corncribs, a barn twice the size of the house, and 
smaller buildings, all resting comfortably on a rise of ground. 
Apple and pear trees surrounded it, now leafless in the wind. 
A curl of smoke rose from the lean-to and told me where the 
cookstove was. As I entered the front gate I felt the joy of 
a country home. It told of simple and plain things, food, 
warmth, comfort, minds content with routine. Michaelson 
appeared at the door and greeted me most enthusiastically. 
He introduced me to his family with the exuberant youthf ul- 
ness of a schoolboy. 

I met the father, a little old dried-up quizzical man, who 
looked at me over his glasses in a wondering way and rubbed 
his mouth with the back of his hand. I met the mother, small, 
wizened, middle-aged, looking as though she had gone through 
a thousand worries. Then I met Michaelson 's wife, a dark, 
chubby, brown-skinned woman, stocky and not over-intelligent. 
They asked me to make myself at home, listened to an account 
of my experiences in getting there, and then Michaelson vol- 
unteered to show me about the place. 

My mind revolted at the thought of such a humdrum life 
as this for myself, though I was constantly touched by its 
charm — for others. I followed the elder Mrs. Michaelson 
into the lean-to and watched her cook, went with Michaelson 
to the barn to look over the live stock and returned to talk 
with Michaelson senior about the prospects of the Republican 
party in Ohio. He was much interested in a man named 



364 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

McKinley, a politician of Ohio, who had been a congressman 
for years and who was now being talked of as the next candi- 
date of the Republican party for the Presidency. I had 
scarcely heard of him up to that time, but I gave my host my 
opinion, such as it was. We sat about the big drum sheet-iron 
stove, heated by natural gas, then but newly discovered and 
piped in that region. After dinner I proposed to my friend 
that we go into the village and inspect the printing plant 
which he had said was for sale. We walked along the road 
discussing the possibilities, and it seemed to me as we walked 
that he was not as enthusiastic as he had been in St. Louis. 

"I've been looking at this fellow's plant," he said vaguely, 
"and I don't know whether I want to give him two hundred 
down for it. He hasn't got anything. That old press he has 
is in pretty bad shape, and his type is all worn down. ' ' 

' - Can we get it for two hundred ? " I asked innocently. 

' ' Sure, two hundred down. I wouldn 't think of giving him 
more. All he wants now is enough to get out of here, some one 
to take it off his hands. He can't run it." 

We went to the office of the Herald, a long dark loft over 
a feed store, and found there a press and some stands of type, 
and a table before the two front windows, which looked west. 
The place was unlighted except by these windows and two in 
the back, and contained no provision for artificial light except 
two or three tin kerosene lamps. Slazey, the youthful editor, 
was not in. We walked about and examined the contents of 
the room, all run down. The town was small and slow, and 
even an idealist could see that there was small room here for 
a career. 

Presently the proprietor returned, and I saw a sad speci- 
men of the country editor of those days : sleepy, sickly-looking, 
with a spare, gaunt face and a head which had the appear- 
ance of an egg with the point turned to the back. His hair 
was long and straight and thin, the back part of it growing 
down over his dusty coat-collar. He wore a pair of baggy 
trousers of no shape or distinguishable color, and his coat and 
waistcoat were greasy. He extended a damp, indifferent hand 
to me. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 365 

"I hear you want to sell out," I said. 

"Yes, I'm willing: to sell," lie replied sadly. 

"Do.you mind showing us what you have here?" 

He went about mechanically, and pointed out the press and 
type and some paper he had on hand. 

"Let me see that list of subscribers you showed me the 
other day," said Michaelson, who now seemed eager to con- 
vince himself that there might be something- in this affair. 

Slazey brought it out from an old drawer and together we 
examined it, spreading it out on the dusty table and looking 
at the names checked off as paid. There were not more than 
a thousand. Some of them had another mark beside the check, 
and this excited my curiosity. 

"What's this cross here for?" 

"That's the one that's paid for this year." 

"Isn't this this year's list?" 

"No. I just thought I'd check up the new payments on 
the old list. I haven't had time to make out a new one." 

Our faces fell. The names checked with a cross did not ag- 
gregate five hundred. 

"I'll tell you what we'd better do," observed Michaelson 
heavily, probably feeling that I had become suddenly de- 
pressed. "Suppose we go around and see some of the mer- 
chants and ask them if they '11 support us with advertising ? ' ' 

I agreed, feeling all the while that the whole venture was 
ridiculous, and together we went about among the silent 
stores, talking with conservative men, who represented all that 
was discouraging and wearisome in life. Here they stood all 
day long calculating in pennies and dimes, whereas the city 
merchant counted in hundreds and thousands. It was dispirit- 
ing. Think of living in a place like this, among such people ! 

"I might give a good paper my support," said one, a long, 
lean, sanctimonious man who looked as though he had narrow 
notions and a firm determination to rule in his small world. 
"But it's mighty hard to make a paper that would suit this 
community. "We're religious and hard-working here, and we 
like the things that interest religious and hard-working people. 



366 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Course if it was run right it might pay pretty well, but I 
dunno as 'twould neither. You never can tell." 

I saw that he would be one hard customer to deal with 
anyhow. If there were many like him The poor, thin- 
blooded, calculating world which he represented frightened me. 

"How much advertising do you think you could give to a 
paper that was 'run' right?" 

' ' Well, that depends, ' ' he said gloomily and disinterestedly. 
"I'd have to see how it was run first. Some weeks I might 
give more than others." 

Michaelson nudged me and we left. 

' ' I forgot to tell you, ' ' he said, ' ' that he 's a Baptist and a 
Republican. He'd expect you to run it in favor of those 
institutions if you got his support. But all the men around 
town won't feel that way." 

In the dusty back room of a drugstore we found a chemist 
who did not know whether a weekly newspaper was of any 
value to him, and could not contribute more than fifty cents 
a week in advertising if it were. The proprietor of the village 
hotel, a thick-set, red-faced man with the air of a country 
evil-doer, said that he did not see that a local newspaper was 
particularly valuable to him. He might advertise, but it 
would be more as a favor than anything else. 

I began to sum up the difficulties of our position. We should 
be handicapped, to begin with, by a wretched printing outfit. 
We should be beholden to a company of small, lean -living, 
narrow men who would take offense at the least show of 
individuality and cut us off entirely from support. We should 
have to busy ourselves gathering trivial items of news, dunning 
hard-working, indifferent farmers for small amounts of money, 
and reduce all our thoughts and ambitions to the measure of 
this narrow world. I saw myself dying by inches. It gave 
me the creeps. Youth and hope were calling. 

"I don't see this," I said to myself. "It's horrible. I 
should die." To Michaelson I said: "Suppose we give up 
our canvassing for today?" 

"We might as well," he replied. "There's a paper over 
at Bowling Green for sale, and it's a better paper. We might 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 367 

go over in a day or two and look at it. "We might as well go 
home now." 

I agreed, and we turned down a street that led to the road, 
meditating. I knew nothing of my destiny, but I knew that 
it had little to do with this. These great wide fields, many of 
them already sown to wheat under the snow, these hundreds 
of oil or gas-well derricks promising a new source of profit 
to many, the cleanly farmhouses and neatly divided farms 
all appealed to me, but this world was not for me. I was 
thinking of something different, richer, more poignant, less 
worthy possibly, more terrible, more fruitful for the moods 
and the emotions. What could these bleak fields offer? I 
thought of St. Louis, the crowded streets, the vital offices of 
the great papers, their thrashing presses, the hotels, the 
theaters, the trains. What, bury myself here? I thought of 
the East — New York possibly, at least Cleveland, Buffalo, 
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia. 

' ' I like the country, but it 's a hard place to make a living, 
isn't it?" I finally said. 

"Yes," he assented gloomily. "I've never been able to 
get anything out of it — but I haven't done very well in the 
city either." 

I sensed the mood of an easily defeated man. 

" I 'm so used to the noise and bustle of the streets that these 
fields seem lonely, ' ' I said. 

"Yes, but you might get over that in time, don't you 
think?" 

Never, I thought, but did not say so ; instead I said : ' ' That 's 
a beautiful sky, isn 't it ? " and he looked blankly to where a 
touch of purple was creeping into the background of red 
and gold. 

We reached the house at dusk. Going through the gate I 
said: "I don't see how I can go into this with you, Mich. 
There isn't enough in it." 

"Well, don't worry about it any more tonight. I'd rather 
the girl wouldn 't know. We '11 talk it over in the morning. ' ' 



CHAPTER LVI 

Disheartening as this village and country life might seem 
as a permanent field of endeavor, it was pleasing enough as 
a spectacle or as the scene of a vacation. Although it was 
late February when I came and there was snow on the 
ground, a warm wind came in a day or two and drove most 
of it away. A full moon rose every night in the east and 
there was a sense of approaching Spring. Before the charm- 
ing old farmhouse flowed the wonderful little Maumee River, 
dimpling over stones and spreading out wide, as though it 
wished to appear much more than it was. There is madness 
in moonlight, and there is madness in that chemical com- 
pound which is youth. Here in this simple farming region, 
once free of the thought that by any chance I might be com- 
pelled to remain here, I felt strangely renewed and free as a 
bird, though at the same time there was an undercurrent of 
sadness, not only for myself but for life itself, the lapse and 
decay of things, the impossibility of tasting or knowing more 
than a fraction of the glories and pleasures that are every- 
where outspread. Although I had not had a vacation in years, 
I was eager to be at work. The greatness of life, its possi- 
bilities, the astounding dreams of supremacy which might 
come true, were calling to me. I wanted to be on, to find 
what life had in store for me ; and yet I wanted to stay here 
for a while. 

Mich 's father, as well as his mother and wife, interested me 
intensely, for they were simple, industrious, believing. They 
were good Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians. The 
grizzled little old farmer who had built up this place or in- 
herited a part and added the rest, was exactly like all the 
other farmers I have ever known : genial, kindly, fairly toler- 
ant, curious as to the wonders of the world without, full of a 
great faith in America and its destiny, sure that it is the 

368 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 369 

greatest country in the world, and that there has never been 
one other like it. That first night at supper, and the next 
morning at breakfast, and all my other days here, the old 
man questioned me as to life, its ways, my beliefs or theories, 
and I am positive that he was delighted to have me there, for 
it was winter and he had little to do besides read his paper. 

The newspaper of largest circulation in this region was the 
Blade of Toledo, which he read assiduously. The mother and 
daughter-in-law did most of the work. The mother was for- 
ever busy cooking breakfast or dinner, cleaning the rooms, 
milking, making butter and cheese, gathering eggs from a 
nearby hennery. Her large cellar was stocked with jellies, 
preserved fruit, apples, potatoes and other vegetables. There 
was an ample store of bacon, salt pork and beef. I found that 
no fresh meat other than chicken was served, but the meals 
were delightful and plentiful, delicious biscuits and jelly, 
fresh butter, eggs, ham, bacon, salt pork or cured beef, and 
the rarely absent fried chicken, as well as some rabbits which 
Mich shot. During my stay he did nothing but idle about 
the barn, practicing on a cornet which he said had saved his 
lungs at a time when he was threatened with consumption. 
But his playing! I wonder the cure did not prove fatal. I 
noted the intense interest of Mich's father in what the dis- 
covery of gas in this region would do for it. He was almost 
certain that all small towns hereabout would now become pros- 
perous manufacturing centers. There would be work for all. 
Wages would go up. Many people would soon come here and 
become rich. This of course never came true at all. The flow 
of natural gas soon gave out and the oil strikes were not even 
rivals of some nearby fields. 

All this talk was alien to my thoughts. I could not fix my 
interest on trade and what it held in store for anybody. I 
knew it must be so and that America was destined to grow 
materially, but somehow the thing did not interest me. My 
thoughts leaped to the artistic spectacle such material pros- 
perity might subsequently present, not to the purely material 
phase of the prosperity itself. Indeed I could never think of 
the work being done in any factory or institution without 



370 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

passing from that work to the lives behind it, the crowds of 
commonplace workers, the great streets which they filled, the 
bare homes, and the separate and distinct dramas of their 
individual lives. I was tremendously interested by the rise 
of various captains of industry then already bestriding Amer- 
ica, their opportunities and pleasures, the ease and skill with 
which they organized "trusts" and combinations, their manip- 
ulations of the great railroads, oil and coal fields, their control 
of the telegraph and the telephone, their sharp and watchful 
domination of American politics ; but only as drama. Grover 
Cleveland was President, and his every deed was paining the 
Republicans quite as much as it was gratifying the Democrats, 
but I could already see that the lot of the underdog varied 
little with the much-heralded changes of administration — 
and it was the underdog that always interested me more than 
the upper one, his needs, his woes, his simplicities. Here, as 
elsewhere, I could see by talking to Mich and his father, men 
became vastly excited, paraded and all but wept over the 
results of one election or another, city, State or national, but 
when all was said and done and America had been "saved," 
or the Constitution ' ' defended " or " wrecked, ' ' the condition 
of the average man, myself included, was about as it had been 
before. 

The few days I spent here represented an interlude between 
an old and a new life. I have always felt that in leaving St. 
Louis I put my youth behind me; that which followed was 
both sobering and broadening. But on this farm, beside this 
charming river, I paused for a few days and took stock of my 
life thus far, and it certainly seemed pointless and unpromis- 
ing. I thought constantly and desperately of my future, the 
uncertainty of it, and yet all the while my eye was fixed not 
upon any really practical solution for me but rather upon 
the pleasures and luxuries of life as enjoyed by others, the 
fine houses, the fine clothes, the privilege of traveling, of 
sharing in the amusements of the rich and the clever. Here I 
was, at the foot of the ladder, with not the least skill for mak- 
ing money, compelled to make my way upward as best I 
might, and yet thinking in terms of millions always. How- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 371 

ever much I might earn in journalism, I had sense enough to 
know that it would yield me little or nothing. After some 
thought, I decided that I would move on to some other city, 
where I would get into the newspaper business for a while 
and then see what I should see. 

Indeed I never saw Mich but once again. 

But Toledo. This was my first free and unaided flight into 
the unknown. I found here a city far more agreeable than 
St. Louis, which, being much greater in size, had districts 
which were positively appalling for their poverty and vice; 
whereas here was a city of not quite 100,000, as clean and 
fresh as any city could be. I recall being struck with clean as- 
phalt pavements, a canal or waterway in which many lake 
vessels were riding, and houses and stores, frame for the most 
part, which seemed clean if not quite new. The first papers 
I bought, the Blade and the Bee, were full of the usual Amer- 
ican small city bluster together with columns and columns 
about American politics and business. 

Before seeking work I decided to investigate the town. I 
was intensely interested in America and its cities, and won- 
dered, in spite of my interest in New York, which I would 
select for my permanent resting-place. When was I to have 
a home of my own ? Would it be as pleasing as one of these 
many which here and elsewhere I saw in quiet rows shaded 
by trees, many of them with spacious lawns and suggestive of 
that security and comfort so dear to the mollusc-like human 
heart? For, after security, nothing seems to be so important 
or so desirable to the human organism as rest, or at least ease. 
The one thing that the life force seems to desire to escape is 
work, or at any rate strife. One would think that man had 
been invented against his will by some malign power and was 
being harried along ways and to tasks against which his soul 
revolted and to which his strength was not equal. 

As I walked about the streets of this city my soul panted 
for the seeming comfort and luxurv of them. The well-kept 
lawns, the shuttered and laced windows ! The wonder of eve- 
ning fires in winter ! The open, cool and shadowy doors in 
summer ! Swings and hammocks on lawns and porches ! The 



372 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

luxury of the book and rocker! Somehow in the stress of 
my disturbed youth I had missed most of this. 

After a day of looking about the city I applied to the city 
editor of the leading morning paper, and encountered one of 
the intellectual experiences of my life. At the city editorial 
desk in a small and not too comfortable room sat a small 
cherubic individual, with a complexion of milk and cream, 
light brown hair and a serene blue eye, who looked me over 
quizzically, as much as to say : ' ' Look what the latest breeze 
has wafted in. ' ' His attitude was neither .antagonistic nor 
welcoming. He was so assured that I half -detected on sight 
the speculative thinker and dreamer. Yet in the role of city 
editor in a mid- West manufacturing town one must have an 
air if not the substance of commercial understanding and 
ability, and so my young city editor seemed to breathe a de- 
termination to be very executive and forceful. 

''You're a St. Louis newspaper man, eh?" he said, eyeing 
me casually. "Never worked in a town of this size, though? 
Well, the conditions are very different. We pay much atten- 
tion to small items — make a good deal out of nothing," and 
he smiled. "But there isn't a thing I can see now, nothing 
beyond a three- or four-day job which you wouldn't want, 
I'm sure." 

"How do you know I wouldn't?" 

"Well, I'll tell you about it. There's a street-ear strike 
on and I could use a man who had nerve enough to ride around 
on the cars the company is attempting to run and report how 
things are. But I'll tell you frankly: it's dangerous. You 
may be shot or hit with a brick." 

I indicated my willingness to undertake this and he looked 
at me in a mock serious and yet approving way. He took me 
on and I went about the city on one car-line and another, 
studying the strange streets, expecting and fearing every 
moment that a brick might be shied at me through the window 
or that a gang of irate workingmen would board the car and 
beat me up. But nothing happened, not a single threatening 
workman anywhere ; I so reported and was told to write it up 
and make as much of the ' ' story ' ' as possible. Without know- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 373 

ing anything of the merits of the ease, my sympathies were all 
with the workingmen. I had seen enough of strikes, and of 
poverty, and of the quarrels between the money-lords and the 
poor, to be all on one side. As was the custom in all news- 
paper offices with which I ever had anything to do, where 
labor and capital were concerned I was told to be neutral 
and not antagonize either side. I wrote my "story" and it 
was published in the first edition. Then, at the order of this 
same youth, I visited some charity bazaar, where all the im- 
portant paintings owned in the city were being exhibited, 
and wrote an account which was headed, "As in Old Toledo," 
with all the silly chaff about ' ' gallants and ladies gay, ' ' after 
which I spread my feet under a desk, being interested to talk 
more with the smiling if indifferent youth who had em- 
ployed me. 

The opportunity soon came, for apparently he was as much 
interested in me as I in him. He came over after I had sub- 
mitted my second bit of copy and announced that it was en- 
tirely satisfactory. A man from the composing-room entered 
and commented on the fact that James Whitcomb Eiley and 
Eugene Field were billed to lecture in the city soon. I 
remarked that I had once seen Field in the office of the News 
in Chicago, which brought out the fact that my city editor 
had once worked in Chicago, had been a member of the White- 
chapel Club, knew Field, Finley Peter Dunne, Brand Whit- 
lock, Ben King and others. At mention of the magic name 
of Ben King, author of "If I Should Die Tonight" and "Jane 
Jones," the atmosphere of Chicago of the time of the White- 
chapel Club and Eugene Field and Ben King returned. At 
once we fell into a varied and gay exchange of intimacies. 

It resulted in an enduring and yet stormy and disillusion- 
ing friendship. If he had been a girl I would have married 
him, of course. It would have been inevitable. We were in- 
tellectual affinities. Our dreams were practically identical, 
though we approached them from different angles. He was the 
sentimentalist in thought, though the realist in action ; I was 
the realist in thought and the sentimentalist in action. He 
took me out to lunch, and we stayed nearly three hours. He 



374 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

took me to dinner, and to do so was compelled to call up his 
wife and say he had to stay in town. He had dreams of be- 
coming a poet and novelist, I of becoming a playwright. Be- 
fore the second day had gone he had shown me a book of fairy- 
tales and some poems. I became enamored of him, the victim 
of a delightful illusion. 

Because he liked me he wanted me to stay on. There was 
no immediate place, he said, but one might open at any time. 
Having very little money, I could not see my way to that, 
but I did try to get a place on the rival paper. That failing, 
he suggested that although I wander on toward Cleveland 
and Buffalo I stand ready to come back if he telegraphed for 
me. Meanwhile we reveled in that wonderful possession, in- 
tellectual affection. I thought him wonderful, perfect, great ; 
he thought — well, I have heard him tell in after years what 
he thought. Even now at times he fixes me with hungry, 
welcoming eyes. 



CHAPTER LVII 

Whether I should go East or "West suddenly became a ques- 
tion with me. I had the feeling that I might do better in De- 
troit or some point west of Chicago, only the nearness of such 
cities as Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and those farther east 
deterred me ; the cost of reaching them was small, and all the 
while I should be moving toward my brother in New York. 
And so, after making inquiry at the office of the Bee for a pos- 
sible opening and finding none, and learning from several 
newspaper men that Detroit was not considered a live journal- 
istic town, I decided to travel eastward, and bought a ticket 
to Cleveland. 

Riding in sight of the tumbling waves of Lake Erie, I 
was taken back in thought to my days in Chicago and all those 
who had already dropped out of my life forever. What a queer, 
haphazard, disconnected thing this living was ! Where should 
I be tomorrow, what doing — the next year — the year after 
that? Should I ever have any money, any standing, any 
friends ? So I tortured myself. Arriving in Cleveland at the 
close of a smoky gray afternoon, I left my bag at the station 
and sought a room, then walked out to see what I should see. 
I knew no one. Not a friend anywhere within five hundred 
miles. My sole resource my little skill as a newspaper worker. 
Buying the afternoon and morning papers, I examined them 
with care, copying down their editorial room addresses, then 
betook me to a small beanery for food. 

The next morning I was up early, determined to see as much 
as I could, to visit the offices of the afternoon papers before 
noon, then to look in upon the city editors of the two or three 
morning papers. The latter proved not very friendly and 
there appeared to be no opening anywhere. But I determined 
to remain here for a few days studying the city as a city and 
visiting the same editors each day or as often as they would 

375 



376 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

endure me. If nothing came of it within a week, and no tele- 
gram came from my friend H in Toledo calling me back, I 

proposed to move on ; to which city I had not as yet made up 
my mind. 

The thing that interested me most about Cleveland then 
was that it was so raw, dark, dirty, smoky, and yet possessed 
of one thing : force, raucous, clattering, semi-intelligent force. 
America was then so new industrially, in the furnace stage 
of its existence. Everything was in the making : fortunes, art, 
social and commercial life. The most impressive things were 
its rich men, their homes, factories, clubs, office buildings and 
institutions of commerce and pleasure generally ; and this was 
as true of Cleveland as of any other city in America. 

Indeed the thing which held my attention, after I had been 
in Cleveland a day or two and had established myself in a 
somber room in a somber neighborhood once occupied by the 
very rich, were those great and new residences in Euclid Ave- 
nue, with wide lawns and iron or stone statues of stags and 
dogs and deer, which were occupied by such rich men as John 
D. Rockefeller, Tom Johnson, and Henry M. Flagler. Rocke- 
feller only a year or two before had given millions to revivify 
the almost defunct University of Chicago, then a small Baptist 
college, and was accordingly being hailed as one of the richest 
men of America. He and his satellites and confreres were 
already casting a luster over Cleveland. They were all living 
here in Euclid Avenue, and I was interested to look up their 
homes, envying them their wealth of course and wishing that 
I were famous or a member of a wealthy family, and that I 
might some day meet one of the beautiful girls I thought must 
be here and have her fall in love with and make me rich. 
Physically or artistically or materially, there was nothing to 
see but business : a few large hotels, like those of every Amer- 
ican city, and these few great houses. Add a few theaters 
and commonplace churches. All American cities and all the 
inhabitants were busy with but one thing: commerce. They 
ate, drank and slept trade. In my wanderings I found a huge 
steel works and a world of low, smoky, pathetic little hovels 
about it. Although I was not as yet given to reasoning about 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 377 

the profound delusion of equality under democracy, this evi- 
dence of the little brain toiling for the big one struck me 
with great force and produced a good deal of speculative 
thought later on. 

The paper with which I was eventually connected was the 
Cleveland Leader, which represented all that was conservative 
in the local life. Wandering into its office on the second or 
third day of my stay, I was met at the desk of the city editor 
by a small, boyisji-looking person of a ferret-like countenance, 
who wanted to know what I was after. I told him, and he 
said there was nothing, but on hearing of the papers with 
which I had been connected and the nature of the work I had 
done he suggested that possibly I might be able to do some- 
thing for the Sunday edition. The Sunday editor proved to 
be a tall, melancholy man with sad eyes, a sallow face, sunken 
cheeks, narrow shoulders and a general air of weariness and 
depression. 

"What is it, now, you want?" he asked slowly, looking up 
from his musty rolltop desk. 

"Your city editor suggested that possibly you might have 
some Sunday work for me to do. I've had experience in this 
line in Chicago and St. Louis." 

"Yes," he said not asking me to sit down. "Well, now, 
what do you think you could write about?" 

This was a poser. Being new to the city I had not thought 
of any particular thing, and could not at this moment. I told 
him this. 

"There's one thing you might write about if you could. 
Did you ever hear of a new-style grain-boat they are putting 
on the Lakes called " 

"Turtle-back?" I interrupted. 

"Turtle-back?" went on the editor indifferently. "Well, 
there 's one here now in the harbor. It 's the first one to come 
here. Do you think you could get up something on that?" 

"I'm sure I could. I'd like to try. Do you use pictures?" 

"You might get a photo or two; we could have drawings 
made from them. ' ' 



378 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

I started for the door, eager to be about this, when he said : 
"We don't pay very much: three dollars a column." 

That was discouraging, but I was filled with the joy of 
doing something. On my way out I stopped at the business 
office and bought a copy of the last Sunday issue, which proved 
to be a poor makeshift composed of a half-dozen articles on 
local enterprises and illustrated with a few crude drawings. 
I read one or two of them, and then looked up my waterfront 
boat. I found it tied up at a dock adjoining an immense rail- 
road yard and near an imposing grain elevator. Finding no- 
body about, I nosed out the bookkeeper of the grain elevator, 
who told me that the captain of the boat had gone to the com- 
pany 's local office in a nearby street. I hastened to the place, 
and there found a bluff old lake captain in blue, short, stout, 
ruddy, coarse, who volunteered, almost with a ' ' Heigh ! ' ' and 
a ' ' Ho ! " to tell me something about it. 

"I think I ought to know a little something about 'em— I 
sailed the first one that was ever sailed out of the port of 
Chicago." 

I listened with open ears. I caught a disjointed story of 
plans and specifications, Sault Ste. Marie, the pine woods of 
Northern Michigan, the vast grain business of Chicago and 
other lake ports, early navigation on the lakes, the theory of 
a bilge keel and a turtle-back top, and all strung together with 
numerous ' ' y 'sees ' ' and ' ' so nows. ' ' I made notes, on backs of 
envelopes, scraps of paper, and finally on a pad furnished me 
by the generous bookkeeper. I carried my notes back to the 
paper. 

The Sunday editor was out. I waited patiently until half- 
past four, and then, the light fading, gave up the idea of 
going with a photographer to the boat. I went to a faded 
green baize-covered table and began to write my story. I had 
no sooner done a paragraph or two than the Sunday editor 
returned, bringing with him an atmosphere of lassitude and 
indifference. I went to him to explain what I had done. 

"Well, write it up, write it up. We'll see," and he turned 
away to his papers. 

I labored hard at my story, and by seven or eight o'clock 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 379 

had ground out two thousand words of description which 
had more of the bluff old captain in it than of the boat. The 
Sunday editor took it when I was through, and shoved it into 
a pigeon-hole, telling me to call in a day or two and he 
would let me know. I thought this strange. It seemed to me 
that if I were working for a Sunday paper I should work every 
day. I called the next day, but Mr. Loomis had not read it. 
The next day he said the story was well enough written, though 
very long. "You don't want to write so loosely. Stick to 
your facts closer." 

This day I suggested a subject of my own, "the beauty 
of some of the new suburbs, ' ' but he frowned at this as offering 
a lot of free advertising to real estate men who ought to be 
made to pay. Then I proposed an article on the magnificence 
of Euclid Avenue, which was turned down as old. I then 
spoke of a great steel works which was but then coming into 
the city, but as this offered great opportunity to all the 
papers he thought poorly of it. He compromised a day or 
two later by allowing me to write up a chicken-farm which lay 
outside the city. 

Of course this made a poor showing for me at the cashier 's 
desk. At the end of the second week I was allowed to put in a 
bill for seven dollars and a half. I had not realized that I was 
wasting so much time. I appealed to all the editors again for 
a regular staff position, but was told there was no opening. 
It began to look as if I should have to leave Cleveland soon, 
and I wondered where I should go next — Buffalo or Pitts- 
burgh, both equally near. 



CHAPTER LVIII 

Finding Cleveland hopeless for me, I one day picked up 
and left. Then came Buffalo, which I reached toward the end 
of March. Aside from the Falls I found it a little tame, no 
especial snap to it — not as much as I had felt to be character- 
istic of Cleveland. "What interest there was for me I provided 
myself, wandering about in odd drear neighborhoods, about 
grain elevators and soap factories and railroad yards and man- 
ufacturing districts. Here, as in Cleveland, I could not help 
but see that in spite of our boasted democracy and equality of 
opportunity there was as much misery and squalor and as 
little decent balancing of opportunity against energy as any- 
where else in the world. The little homes, the poor, shabby, 
colorless, drear, drab little homes with their grassless "yards," 
their unpaved streets, their uncollected garbage, their flutter- 
ing, thin-flamed gas-lamps, the crowds of ragged, dirty, ill- 
cared-for children! Near at hand was always the inevitable 
and wretched saloon, not satisfying a need for pleasure in a 
decent way but pandering to the lowest and most conniving 
and most destroying instincts of the lowest politicians and 
heelers and grafters and crooks, while the huge financial and 
manufacturing magnates at the top with their lust for power 
and authority used the very flesh of the weaker elements 
for purposes of their own. It was the saloon, not liquor, 
which brought about the prohibition folly. I used to listen, 
as a part of my reportorial duties, to the blatherings of thin- 
minded, thin-blooded, thin-experienced religionists as well 
as to those of kept editorial writers, about the merits and bless- 
ings and opportunities of our noble and bounteous land ; but 
whenever I encountered such regions as this I knew well 
enough that there was something wrong with their noble 
maunderings. Shout as they might, there was here displayed 
before my very eyes ample evidence that somewhere there 

380 






A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 381 

was a screw loose in the "Fatherhood of Man — Brotherhood 
of God" machinery. 

After I had placed myself in a commonplace neighborhood 
near the business center, I canvassed the newspaper offices 
and their editors. Although I had in my pocket that letter 
from the publisher of the St. Louis Republic extolling my 
virtues as a reporter and correspondent, so truly vagrom 
was my mood and practical judgment that I did not present it 
to any one. Instead I merely mooned into one office after 
another (there were only four papers here), convinced before 
entering that I should not get anything — and I did not. One 
young city editor, seeming to take at least an interest in me, 
assured me that if I would remain in Buffalo for six weeks 
he could place me ; but since I had not enough money to sus- 
tain myself so long I decided not to wait. Ten days spent in 
reconnoitering these offices daily, and I concluded that it was 
useless to remain longer. Yet before I went I determined to 
see at least one thing more : the Falls. 

Therefore one day I traveled by trolley to Niagara and 
looked at that tumbling flood, then not chained or drained by 
turbine water-power sluices. I was impressed, but not quite 
so much as I had thought I should be. Standing out on a 
rock near the greatest volume of water under a gray sky, I 
was awed by the downpour and then became dizzy and felt as 
though I were being carried along whether I would or not. 
Farther upstream I stared at the water as it gathered force 
and speed, wondering how I should feel if I were in a small 
canoe and fighting it for my life. Behind the falls were 
great stalagmites and stalactites of ice and snow still standing 
from the cold of weeks before. I recalled that Blondel, 
a famous French swimmer of his day, had ten years before 
swum these fierce and angry waters below the Falls. I won- 
dered how he had done it, so wildly did they leap, huge wheels 
of water going round and round and whitecaps leaping and 
spitting and striking at each other. 

When I returned to Buffalo I congratulated myself that if 
I had got nothing else out of my visit to Buffalo, at least I 
had gained this. 



CHAPTER LIX 

I now decided that Pittsburgh would be as good a field as 
any, and one morning seeing a sign outside a cut-rate ticket- 
broker's window reading "Pittsburgh, $5.75," I bought a 
ticket, returned to my small room to pack my bag, and depart- 
ed. I arrived at Pittsburgh at six or seven that same evening. 

Of all the cities in which I ever worked or lived Pittsburgh 
was the most agreeable. Perhaps it was due to the fact that 
my stay included only spring, summer and fall, or that I 
found a peculiarly easy newspaper atmosphere, or that the 
city was so different physically from any I had thus far seen ; 
but whether owing to one thing or another certainly no other 
newspaper work I ever did seemed so pleasant, no other city 
more interesting. What a city for a realist to work and dream 
in ! The wonder to me is that it has not produced a score of 
writers, poets, painters and sculptors, instead of — well, how 
many? And who are they? 

I came down to it through the brown-blue mountains of 
Western Pennsylvania, and all day long we had been winding 
at the base of one or another of them, following the bed of a 
stream or turning out into a broad smooth valley, crossing 
directly at the center of it, or climbing some low ridge with 
a puff-puff-puff and then clattering almost recklessly down 
the other slope. I had never before seen any mountains. The 
sight of sooty-faced miners at certain places, their little oil 
and tow tin lamps fastened to their hats, their tin dinner- 
pails on their arms, impressed me as something new and 
faintly reminiscent of the one or two small coal mines about 
Sullivan, Indiana, where I had lived when I was a boy of 
seven. Along the way I saw a heavy-faced and heavy-bodied 
type of peasant woman, with a black or brown or blue or 
green skirt and a waist of a contrasting color, a headcloth 
or neckerchief of still another, trailed by a few children of 

382 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 383 

equally solid proportions, hanging up clothes or doing some- 
thing else about their miserable places. These were the much- 
maligned hunkies just then being imported by the large 
manufacturing and mining and steel-making industries of 
the country to take the place of the restless and less docile 
American working man and woman. I marveled at their 
appearance and number, and assumed, American-fashion, that 
in their far-off and unhappy lands they had heard of the 
wonderful American Constitution, its guaranty of life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness, as well as of the bounteous op- 
portunities afforded by this great land, and that they had 
forsaken their miseries to come all this distance to enjoy these 
greater blessings. 

I did not then know of the manufacturers' foreign labor 
agent with his lying propaganda among ignorant and often 
fairly contented peasants, painting America as a country roll- 
ing in wealth and opportunity, and then bringing them here 
to take the places of more restless and greatly underpaid 
foreigners who, having been brought over by the same gay pic- 
tures, were becoming irritated and demanded more pay. I 
did not then know of the padrone, the labor spy, the company 
store, five cents an hour for breaker children, the company 
stockade, all in full operation at this time. < All I knew was 
that there had been a great steel strike in Pittsburgh recently, 
that Andrew Carnegie, as well as other steel manufac- 
turers (the Olivers, for one), had built fences and strung them 
with electrified barbed wire in order to protect themselves 
against the "lawless" attacks of "lawless" workingmen. 

I also knew that a large number of State or county or city 
paid deputy sheriffs and mounted police and city policemen 
had been sworn in and set to guarding the company's prop- 
erty and that H. C. Frick, a leading steel manager for Mr. 
Carnegie, had been slightly wounded by a desperado named 
Alexander Berkman, who was inflaming these workingmen, all 
foreigners of course, lawless and unappreciative of the great 
and prosperous steel company which was paying them reason- 
able wages and against which they had no honest complaint. 

Our mid-Western papers, up to the day of Cleveland 's elec- 



384 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

tion in 1892 and for some time after, had been full of the 
merits of this labor dispute, with long and didactic editorials, 
intended in the main to prove that the workingman was not 
so greatly underpaid, considering the type of labor he per- 
formed and the intelligence he brought to his task; that the 
public was not in the main vastly interested in labor disputes, 
both parties to the dispute being unduly selfish ; that it would 
be a severe blow to the prosperity of the country if labor dis- 
putes were too long continued ; that unless labor was reason- 
able in its demands capital would become disheartened and 
leave the country. I had not made up my mind that the 
argument was all on one side, although I knew that the aver- 
'age man in America, despite its great and boundless oppor- 
tunities, was about as much put upon and kicked about and 
underpaid as any other. This growing labor problem or the 
general American dissatisfaction with poor returns upon 
efforts made crystallized three years later in the Free Silver 
campaign and the "gold parades." The "full dinner-pail" 
was then invented as a slogan to counteract the vast economic 
unrest, and the threat to close down and so bring misery to 
the entire country unless William McKinley was elected was 
also freely posted. Henry George, Father McGlynn, Herr 
Most, Emma Goldman, and a score of others were abroad 
voicing the woes of hundreds of thousands who were supposed 
to have no woes. 

At that time, as I see it now, America was just entering 
upon the most lurid phase of that vast, splendid, most lawless 
and most savage period in which the great financiers were 
plotting and conniving at the enslavement of the people and 
belaboring each other. Those crude parvenu dynasties which 
now sit enthroned in our democracy, threatening its very life 
with their pretensions and assumptions, were then in their 
very beginning. John D. Rockefeller was still in Cleveland ; 
Flagler, William Rockefeller, H. H. Rogers, were still com- 
paratively young and secret agents; Carnegie was still in 
Pittsburgh, an iron master, and of all his brood of powerful 
children only Frick had appeared; William H. Vanderbilt 
and Jay Gould had only recently died ; Cleveland was Presi- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 385 

dent, and Mark Hanna was an unknown business man in 
Cleveland. The great struggles of the railroads, the coal 
companies, the gas companies, to overawe and tax the people 
were still in abeyance, or just being born. The multi-million- 
aire had arrived, it is true, but not the billionaire. On every 
hand were giants plotting, fighting, dreaming; and yet in 
Pittsburgh there was still something of a singing spirit. 

When I arrived here and came out of the railway station, 
which was directly across the Monongahela River from the 
business center, "I was impressed by the huge walls of hills 
that arose on every hand, a great black sheer ridge rising to 
a height of five or six hundred feet to my right and enclosing 
this river, on the bosom of which lay steamboats of good size. 
From the station a pleasingly designed bridge of fair size led 
to the city beyond, and across it trundled in unbroken lines 
street-cars and wagons and buggies of all sizes and descrip- 
tions. The city itself was already smartly outlined by lights, 
a galaxy climbing the hills in every direction, and below me as 
I walked out upon this bridge was an agate stream reflecting 
the lights from either shore. Below this was another bridge, 
and upstream another. The whole river for a mile or more 
was suddenly lit to a rosy glow, a glow which, as I saw upon 
turning, came from the tops of some forty or fifty stacks 
belching a deep orange-red flame. At the same time an enor- 
mous pounding and crackling came from somewhere, as though 
titans were at work upon subterranean anvils: I stared and 
admired. I felt that I was truly adventuring into a new and 
strange world. I was glad now that I had not found work in 
Toledo or Cleveland or Buffalo. 

The city beyond the river proved as interesting as the river 
cliffs and forges about the station. As I walked along I dis- 
covered the name of the street (Smithfield), which began at 
the bridge's end and was lined with buildings of not more 
than three or four stories although it was one of the principal 
streets of the business center. At the bridge-head on the city 
side stood a large smoke-colored stone building, which later 
I discovered was the principal hotel, the Monongahela, and 
beyond that was a most attractive and unusual postoffice build- 



386 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

ing. I came to a cross street finally (Fifth Avenue), brightly 
lighted and carrying unusual traffic, and turned into it. I 
found this central region to be most puzzlingly laid out, and 
did not attempt to solve its mysteries. Instead, I entered 
a modest restaurant in a side street. Later I hunted up a 
small hotel, where I paid a dollar for a room for the night. I 
retired, speculating as to how I should make out here. Some- 
thing about the city drew me intensely. I wished I might 
remain for a time. The next morning I was up bright and 
early to look up the morning papers and find out the names of 
the afternoon papers. I found that there were four: the 
Dispatch and Times, morning papers, and the Gazette-Tele- 
graph and Leader, afternoon. I thought them most interest- 
ing and different from those of other cities in which I had 
worked. 

"Andy Pastor had his right hand lacerated while at work in the 
23-inch mill yesterday." 

"John Kristoff had his right wrist sprained while at work in the 
140-inch mill yesterday." 

"Joseph Novic is suffering from contused wounds of the left wrist 
received while at work in the 23 -inch mill yesterday." 

"A train of hot metal, being hauled from a mixing-house to open 
hearth No. 2, was side-swiped by a yard engine near the 48-inch mill. 
The impact tilted the ladles of some of the cars and the hot metal 
spilled in a pool of water along the track. Antony Brosak, Constan- 
tine Czernik and Kafros Maskar were seriously wounded by the explod- 
ing metal." 

Such items arrested my attention at once; and then such 
names as Squirrel Hill, Sawmill Run, Moon Run, Hazelwood, 
Wind Gap Road, Braddock, McKeesport, Homestead, Swiss- 
vale, somehow made me wish to know more of this region. 

The Dispatch was Republican, the Times Democratic. Both 
were evidently edited with much conservatism as to local news. 
I made haste to visit the afternoon newspaper offices, only to 
discover that they were fully equipped with writers. I then 
proceeded in search of a room and finally found one in Wylie 
Avenue, a curious street that climbed a hill to its top and 
then stopped. Here, almost at the top of this hill, in an old 
yellow stonefront house the rear rooms of which commanded 
a long and deep canyon or ' ' run, ' ' I took a room for a week. 
The family of this house rented rooms to several others, clerks 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 387 

who looked and proved to be a genial sort, holding a kind of 
court on the front steps of an evening. 

I now turned to the morning papers, going first to the 
Times, which had its offices in a handsome building, one of the 
two or three high office buildings in the city. The city editor 
received me graciously but could promise nothing. At the 
Dispatch, which was published in a three-story building at 
Smithfield and Diamond streets, I found a man who expressed 
much more interest. He was a slender, soft-spoken, one- 
handed man. On very short acquaintance I found him to be 
shrewd and canny, gracious always, exceedingly reticent and 
uncommunicative and an excellent judge of news, and plainly 
holding his job not so much by reason of what he put into his 
paper as by what he kept out of it. He wanted to know where 
I had worked before I came to Pittsburgh, whether I had been 
connected with any paper here, whether I had ever done 
feature stuff. I described my experiences as nearly as I could, 
and finally he said that there was nothing now but he was 
expecting a vacancy to occur soon. If I could come around in 
the course of a week or ten days (I drooped sadly) — well, 
then, in three or four days, he thought he might do something 
for me. The salary would not be more than eighteen the week. 
My spirits fell at that, but his manner was so agreeable and 
his hope for me so keen that I felt greatly encouraged and 
told him I would wait a few days anyhow. My friend in 
Toledo had promised me that he would wire me at the first 
opening, and I was now expecting some word from him. This 
I told to this city editor, and he said: "Well, you might wait 
until you hear from him anyhow. ' ' A thought of my possible 
lean purse did not seem to occur to him, and I marveled at the 
casual manner in which he assumed that I could wait. 

Thereafter I roamed the city and its environs, and to my 
delight found it to be one of the most curious and fascinating 
places I had ever seen. From a stationery store I first secured 
a map and figured out the lay of the town. At a glance I 
saw that the greater part of it stretched eastward along the 
tongue of land that was between the Allegheny and the 
Monongahela, and that this was Pittsburgh proper. Across 



388 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the Allegheny, on the north side, was the city of Allegheny, 
an individual municipality but so completely connected with 
Pittsburgh as to be identical with it, and connected with it 
by many bridges. Across the Monongahela, on the south side, 
were various towns : Mt. Washington, Duquesne, Homestead. 
I was interested especially in Homestead because of the long 
and bitter contest between the steel-workers and the Carnegie 
Company, which for six months and more in 1892 had occu- 
pied space on the front page of every newspaper in America. 

Having studied my map I explored, going first across the 
river into Allegheny. Here I found a city built about the base 
of high granite hills or between ridges in hollows called 
"gaps" or "runs" with a street or car-line clambering and 
twisting directly over them. A charming park and boulevard 
system had been laid out, with the city hall, a public market 
and a Carnegie public library as a center. The place had large 
dry-goods and business houses. 

On another day I crossed to the south side and ascended by 
an inclined plane, such as later I discovered to be one of the 
transportation features of Pittsburgh, the hill called Mt. 
Washington, from the top of which, walking along an avenue 
called Grand View Boulevard which skirted the brow of the 
hill, I had the finest view of a city I have ever seen. In 
later years I looked down upon New York from the heights of 
the Palisades and the hills of Staten Island; on Eome from 
the Pincian Gardens ; on Florence from San Miniato ; and on 
Pasadena and Los Angeles from the slopes of Mt. Lowe ; but 
never anywhere have I seen a scene which impressed me more 
than this : the rugged beauty of the mountains, which encircle 
the city, the three rivers that run as threads of bright metal, 
dividing it into three parts, the several cities joined as one, 
their clambering streets presenting a checkered pattern em- 
phasized here and there by the soot-darkened spires of 
churches and the walls of the taller and newer and cleaner 
office buildings. 

As in most American cities of any size, the skyscraper was 
just being introduced and being welcomed as full proof of the 
growth and wealth and force of the city. No city was com- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 389 

plete without at least one : the more, of course, the grander. 
Pittsburgh had a better claim to the skyscraper as a com- 
mercial necessity than any other American city that I know. 
The tongue of land which lies between the Allegheny and the 
Monongahela, very likely not more than two or three square 
miles in extent, is still the natural heart of the commercial 
life for fifty, a hundred miles about. Here meet the three 
large rivers, all navigable. Here, again, the natural runs and 
gaps of the various hills about, as well as the levels which 
pursue the banks of the streams and which are the natural 
vents or routes for railroad lines, street-cars and streets, come 
to a common center. Whether by bridges from Allegheny, 
the south bank of the Ohio or the Monongahela, or along the 
shores of the Allegheny or Monongahela within the city of 
Pittsburgh itself, all meet somewhere in this level tongue; 
and here, of necessity, is the business center. So without the 
tall building, I cannot see how one-tenth of the business which 
would and should be normally transacted here would ever 
come about. 



CHAPTER LX 

Barring two or three tall buildings, the city of Pittsburgh 
■was then of a simple and homelike aspect. A few blackened 
church spires, a small dark city hall and an old market-place, 
a long stretch of blast furnaces, black as night, and the lightly 
constructed bridges over the rivers, gave it all an airy grace 
and charm. 

Since the houses up here were very simple, mostly working- 
men 's cottages, and the streets back followed the crests of hills 
twisting and winding as they went and providing in conse- 
quence the most startling and effective views of green hills 
and mountains beyond, I decided that should I be so fortunate 
as to secure work I would move over here. It would be like 
living in a mountain resort, and most inexpensively. 

I descended and took a car which followed the Mononga- 
hela upstream to Homestead, and here for the first time had 
a view of that enormous steel plant which only recently (June 
to December, 1892) had played such a great part in the indus- 
trial drama of America. The details of the quarrel were fairly 
fresh in my mind: how the Carnegie Steel Company had 
planned, with the technicalities of a wage-scale readjustment 
as an excuse, to break the power of the Amalgamated Steel 
Workers, who were becoming too forceful and who were best 
organized in their plant, and how the Amalgamated, resent- 
ing the introduction of three hundred Pinkerton guards to 
"protect" the plant, had attacked them, killing several and 
injuring others, and so permitting the introduction of the 
State militia, which speedily and permanently broke the power 
of the strikers. They could only wait then and starve, and 
so they had waited and starved for six months, when they 
finally returned to work, such of them as would be received. 
When I reached there in April, 1894, the battle was already 
fifteen months past, but the feeling was still alive. I did not 

390 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 391 

then know what it was about this town of Homestead that 
was so depressing, but in the six months of my stay here I 
found that it was a compound of a sense of defeat and sullen 
despair. The men had not forgotten. Even then the company 
was busy, and had been for months, importing Poles, Hun- 
garians, Lithuanians, to take the places of the ousted strikers. 
Whole colonies were already here, housed under the most 
unsatisfactory conditions, and more were coming. Hence the 
despair of those who had been defeated. 

Along the river sprawled for a quarter of a mile or more 
the huge low length of the furnaces, great black bottle-like 
affairs with rows of stacks and long low sheds or buildings 
paralleling them, sheds from which came a continuous ham- 
mering and sputtering and the glow of red fire. The whole 
was shrouded by a pall of gray smoke, even in the bright sun- 
shine. Above the plant, on a slope which rose steeply behind 
it, were a few moderately attractive dwellings grouped about 
two small parks, the trees of which were languishing for want 
of air. Behind and to the sides of these were the spires of 
several churches, those soporifics against failure and despair. 
Turning up side streets one found, invariably, uniform frame 
houses, closely built and dulled by smoke and grime, and be- 
low, on the flats behind the mill, were cluttered alleys so 
unsightly and unsanitary as to shock me into the belief that 
I was once more witnessing the lowest phases of Chicago slum- 
life, the worst I had ever seen. The streets were mere mud- 
tracks. Where there were trees (and there were few) they 
were dwarfed and their foliage withered by a metallic fume 
which was over all. Though the sun was bright at the top of 
the hill, down here it was gray, almost cloudy, at best a filtered 
dull gold haze. 

The place held me until night. I browsed about its saloons, 
of which there was a large number, most of them idle during 
the drift of the afternoon. The open gates of the mill held 
my interest also, for through them I could see furnaces, huge 
cranes, switching engines, cars of molten iron being hauled 
to and fro, and mountains of powdered iron ore and scrap 
iron piled here and there awaiting the hour of new birth in 



392 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the smelting vats. When the sun had gone down, and I had 
watched a shift of men coming out with their buckets and 
coats over their arms, and other hundreds entering in a rush, 
I returned to the city with a sense of the weight and breadth 
and depth of huge effort. Here bridges and rail and plate 
steel were made for all the world. But of all these units that 
dwelt and labored here scarce a fraction seemed even to sense 
a portion of the meaning of all they did. I knew that Car- 
negie had become a multi-millionaire, as had Phipps and 
others, and that he was beginning to give libraries, that Phipps 
had already given several floral conservatories, and that their 
"lobbies" in Congress were even then bartering for the 
patronage of the government on their terms; but the poor 
units in these hovels at Homestead — what did they know? 

On another day I explored the east end of Pittsburgh, 
which was the exclusive residence section of the city and a 
contrast to such hovels and deprivations as I had witnessed 
at Homestead and among the shacks across the Monongahela 
and below Mt. Washington. Never in my life, neither before 
nor since, in New York, Chicago or elsewhere, was the vast 
gap which divides the rich from the poor in America so vividly 
and forcefully brought home to me. I had seen on my map a 
park called Schenley, and thinking that it might be interest- 
ing I made my way out a main thoroughfare called (quite 
appropriately, I think) Fifth Avenue, lined with some of the 
finest residences of the city. Never did the mere possession 
of wealth impress me so keenly. Here were homes of the most 
imposing character, huge, verandaed, tree-shaded, with im- 
mense lawns, great stone or iron or hedge fences and formal 
gardens and walks of a most ornate character. It was a region 
of well-curbed, well-drained and well-paved thoroughfares. 
Even the street-lamps were of a better design than elsewhere, 
so eager was a young and democratic municipality to see that 
superior living conditions were provided for the rich. There 
were avenues lined with well-cropped trees, and at every turn 
one encountered expensive carriages, their horses jingling 
silver or gold-gilt harness, their front seats occupied by one 
or two footmen in livery, while reclining was Madam or Sir, 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 393 

or both, gazing condescendingly upon the all too comfortable 
world about them. 

In Schenley Park was a huge and interesting arboretum or 
botanical garden under glass, a most oriental affair given by 
Fhipps of the Carnegie Company. A large graceful library 
of white limestone, perhaps four or five times the size of the 
one in Allegheny, given by Andrew Carnegie, was in process 
of construction. And he was another of the chief beneficiaries 
of Homestead, the possessor of a great house in this region, 
another in New York and still another in Scotland, a man for 
whom the unwitting "Pinkertons" and contending strikers 
had been killed. Like huge ribbons of fire these and other 
names of powerful steel men — the Olivers, Thaws, Fricks, 
Thompsons — seemed to rise and band the sky. It seemed 
astonishing to me that some men could thus rise and soar 
about the heavens like eagles, while others, drab sparrows all, 
could only pick among the offal of the hot ways below. What 
were these things called democracy and equality about which 
men prated? Had they any basis in fact ? There was constant 
palaver about the equality of opportunity which gave such 
men as these their chance, but I could not help speculating as 
to the lack of equality of opportunity these men created for 
others once their equality at the top had made them. If 
equality of opportunity had been so excellent for them why 
not for others, especially those in their immediate care ? True, 
all men had not the brains to seize upon and make use of that 
which was put before them, but again, not all men of brains 
had the blessing of opportunity as had these few men. 
Strength, as I felt, should not be too arrogant or too forgetful 
of the accident or chance by which it had arrived. It might 
do something for the poor — pay them decent living wages, for 
instance. Were these giants planning to subject their sons 
and daughters to the same "equality of opportunity" which 
had confronted them at the start and which they were so 
eager to recommend to the attention of others? Not at all. 
In this very neighborhood I passed an exclusive private 
school for girls, with great grounds and a beautiful wall — 
another sample of equality of opportunity. 



394 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

On the fourth day of my stay here I called again at the 
Dispatch office and was given a position, but only after the 
arrival of a telegram from Toledo offering me work at eighteen 
a week. Now I had long since passed out of the eighteen-dollar 
stage of reporting, and this was by no means a comforting 
message. If I could show it to the Dispatch city editor, I 
reasoned, it would probably hasten his decision to accept me, 
but also he might consider eighteen dollars as a rate of pay 
acceptable to me and would offer no more. I decided not to 
use it just then but to go first and see if anything had come 
about in my favor. 

"Nothing yet," he said on seeing me. "Drop around to- 
morrow or Saturday. I'm sure to know then one way or 
the other. ' ' 

I went out and in the doorway below stood and meditated. 
What was I to do ? If I delayed too long my friend in Toledo 
would not be able to do anything for me, and if I showed this 
message it would fix my salary at a place below that which 
I felt I deserved. I finally hit upon the idea of changing the 
eighteen to twenty-five and went to a telegraph office to find 
some girl to rewrite it for me. Not seeing a girl I would be 
willing to approach, I worked over it myself, carefully erasing 
and changing until the twenty-five, while a little forced and 
scraggly, looked fairly natural. With this in my pocket I 
returned to the Dispatch this same afternoon, and told the city 
editor with as great an air of assurance as I could achieve that 
I had just received this message and was a little uncertain as 
to what to do about it. "The fact is," I said, "I have started 
from the West to go East. New York is my eventual goal, 
unless I find a good place this side of it. But I 'm up against 
it now and unless I can do something here I might as well 
go back there for the present. I wouldn 't show you this except 
that I must answer it tonight. ' ' 

He read it and looked at me uncertainly. Finally he got up, 
told me to wait a minute, and went through a nearby door. 
In a minute or two he returned and said: "Well, that's all 
right. We can do as well as that, anyhow, if you want to stay 
at that rate. ' ' 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 395 

"All right," I replied as nonchalantly as I could. "When 
do I start?" 

"Come around tomorrow at twelve. I may not have any- 
thing for you, but I'll carry you for a day or two until I 
have." 

I trotted down the nearby steps as fast as my feet would 
carry me, anxious to get out of his sight so that I might 
congratulate myself freely. I hurried to a telegraph office to 
reject my friend's offer. To celebrate my cleverness and suc- 
cess I indulged in a good meal at one of the best restaurants. 
Here I sat, and to prepare myself for my work examined that 
day's Dispatch, as well as the other papers, with a view to 
unraveling their method of treating a feature or a striking 
piece of news, also to discover what they considered a feature. 
By nine or ten I had solved that mystery as well as I could, 
and then to quiet my excited nerves I walked about the busi- 
ness section, finally crossing to Mt. Washington so as to view 
the lighted city at night from this great height. It was 
radiantly clear up there, and a young moon shining, and I 
had the pleasure of looking down upon as wonderful a night 
panorama as I have ever seen, a winking and fluttering field 
of diamonds that outrivaled the sky itself. As far as the eye 
could see were these lamps blinking and winking, and over- 
head was another glistering field of stars. Below was that 
enormous group of stacks with their red tongues waving in the 
wind. Far up the Monongahela, where lay Homestead and 
McKeesport and Braddock and Swissvale, other glows of red 
fire indicated where huge furnaces were blazing and boiling 
in the night. I thought of the nest of slums I had seen at 
Homestead, of those fine houses in the east end, and of Car- 
negie with his libraries, of Phipps with his glass conserva- 
tories. How to get up in the world and be somebody was my 
own thought now, and yet I knew that wealth was not for me. 
The best I should ever do was to think and dream, standing 
aloof as a spectator. 

The next day I began work on the Dispatch and for six 
months was a part of it, beginning with ordinary news re- 
porting, but gradually taking up the task of preparing orig- 



396 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

inal column features, first for the daily and later for the 
Sunday issue. Still later, not long before I left, I was by way 
of being an unpaid assistant to the dramatic editor, and a 
traveling correspondent. 

What impressed me most was the peculiar character of the 
city and the newspaper world here, the more or less somnolent 
nature of its population (apart from the steel companies and 
their employees) and the genial and sociable character of the 
newspaper men. Never had I encountered more intelligent or 
helpful or companionable albeit cynical men than I found 
here. They knew the world, and their opportunities for 
studying public as well as private impulses and desires and 
contrasting them with public and private performances were 
so great as to make them puzzled if not always accurate judges 
of affairs and events. One can always talk to a newspaper 
man, I think, with the full confidence that one is talking to 
a man who is at least free of moralistic mush. Nearly every- 
thing in connection with those trashy romances of justice, 
truth, mercy, patriotism, public profession of all sorts, is al- 
ready and forever gone if they have been in the business for 
any length of time. The religionist is seen by them for what 
he is: a swallower of romance or a masquerader looking to 
profit and preferment. Of the politician, they know or believe 
but one thing: that he is out for himself, a trickster artfully 
juggling with the moods and passions and ignorance of the 
public. Judges are men who have by some chance or other 
secured good positions and are careful to trim their sails 
according to the moods and passions of the strongest element 
in any community or nation in which they chance to be. The 
arts are in the main to be respected, when they are not frankly 
confessed to be enigmas. 

In a very little while I came to be on friendly terms with 
the men of this and some other papers, men who, because of 
their intimate contact with local political and social condi- 
tions, were well fitted to enlighten me as to the exact economic 
and political conditions here. Two in particular, the political 
and labor men of this paper were most helpful. The former, 
a large, genial, commercial-drummer type, who might also 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 397 

have made an excellent theatrical manager or promoter, pro- 
vided me with a clear insight into the general cleavage of 
local and State politics and personalities. I liked him very 
much. The other, the labor man, was a slow, silent, dark, 
square-shouldered and almost square-headed youth, who 
drifted in and out of the office irregularly. He it was who 
attended, when permitted by the working people themselves, 
all labor meetings in the city or elsewhere, as far east at 
times as the hard coal regions about Wilkes-Barre and Scran- 
ton. As he himself told me, he was the paper's sole authority 
for such comments or assertions as it dared to make in con- 
nection with the mining of coal and the manufacture of steel. 
He was an intense sympathizer with labor, but not so much 
with organized as with unorganized workers. He believed 
that labor here had two years before lost a most important 
battle, one which would show in its contests with money 
in the future : which was true. He pretended to know 
that there was a vast movement on foot among the moneyed 
elements in America to cripple if not utterly destroy organ- 
ized labor, and to that end he assured me once that all the 
great steel and coal and oil magnates were in a conspiracy to 
flood the country with cheap foreign labor, which they had 
lured or were luring here by all sorts of dishonest devices; 
once here, these immigrants were to be used to break the 
demand of better-paid and more intelligent labor. He pre- 
tended to know that in the coal and steel regions thousands 
had already been introduced and more were on their way, 
and that all such devices as showy ehurches and schools for 
defectives, etc., were used to keep ignorant and tame those 
already here. 

"But you can't say anything about it in Pittsburgh," he 
said to me. "If I should talk I'd have to get out of here. 
The papers here won't use a thing unfavorable to the mag- 
nates in any of these fields. I write all sorts of things, but 
they never get in." 

He read the Congressional Record daily, as well as various 
radical papers from different parts of the country, and was 
constantly calling my attention to statistics and incidents 



398 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

which proved that the workingman was being most unjustly 
put upon and undermined ; but he never did it in any urgent 
or disturbed manner. Bather, he seemed to be profoundly con- 
vinced that the cause of the workers everywhere in America 
was hopeless. They hadn't the subtlety and the force and 
the innate cruelty of those who ruled them. They were given 
to religious and educational illusions, the parochial school 
and church paper, which left them helpless. In the course of 
time, because I expressed interest in and sympathy for these 
people, he took me into various mill slums in and near the city 
to see how they lived. 



CHAPTER LXI 

I went with him first to Homestead, then to some tenements 
there, later to some other mill districts nearer Pittsburgh, the 
name of which I have forgotten. What astonished me, in so 
far as the steel mills were concerned, was the large number of 
furnaces going at once, the piles, mountains, of powdered iron 
ore ready to be smelted, the long lines of cars, flat, box and 
coal cars, and the nature and size and force of the machinery 
used to roll steel. The work, as he or his friends the bosses 
showed me, was divided between the "front" and the "back." 
Those working at the front of the furnace took care of the 
molten ore and slag which was being "puddled." The men 
at the back, the stock and yard men, filled huge steel buckets 
or "skips" suspended from traveling cranes with ore, fuel 
and limestone, all of which was piled near at hand; this 
material was then trundled to a point over the mouth of the 
melting- vats, as they were called, and "released" via a mov- 
able bottom. At this particular plant I was told that the 
machinery for handling all this was better than elsewhere, the 
company being richer and more progressive. In some of the 
less progressive concerns the men filled carts with raw ma- 
terial and then trundled them around to the front of a hoist, 
which was at the back of the furnace, where they were lifted 
and dumped into the furnaces. But in this mill all a man 
had to do to fill a steel bucket with raw material was to push 
one of those steel buckets suspended from a trolley under a 
chute and pull a rod, when the "stock" tumbled into it. 
From these it was trundled, by machinery, to a point over the 
furnace. The furnaces were charged or fed constantly by 
feeders working in twelve-hour shifts, so that there was little 
chance to rest from their labors. Their pay was not more than 
half of that paid to the men at the "front" because it was 

399 



400 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

neither so hard nor so skillful, although it looked hard 
enough to me. 

The men at the front, the puddlers, were the labor princes 
of this realm and yet among the hardest worked. A puddling 
or blast furnace was a brick structure like an oven, about seven 
feet high and six feet square, with two compartments, one a 
receptacle into which pigiron was thrown, the other a fuel 
chamber where the melting heat was generated. The drafts 
were so arranged that the flame swept from the fuel chamber 
directly upon the surface of the iron. From five to six hun- 
dred pounds of pigiron were put into each furnace at one 
time, after which it was closed and sufficient heat applied to 
melt down the iron. Then the puddler began to work it with 
an iron rod through a hole in the furnace door, so as to stir 
up the liquid and bring it in contact with the air. As the im- 
purities became separated from the iron and rose to the top 
as slag, they were tipped out through a center notch. As it 
became freer from impurities, a constantly higher tempera- 
ture was required to keep the iron in a liquid condition. 
Gradually it began to solidify in granules, much as butter 
forms in churning. Later it took on or was worked into 
large malleable balls or lumps or rolls like butter, three to 
any given "charge" or furnace. Then, while still in a com- 
paratively soft but not molten condition, these were taken 
out and thrown across a steel floor to a "taker" to be worked 
by other machinery and other processes. 

Puddling was a full-sized man's job. There were always 
two, and sometimes three, to a single furnace, and they took 
turns at working the metal, as a rule ten minutes to a turn. 
No man could stand before a furnace and perform that back- 
breaking toil continually. Even when working by spells a 
man was often nearly exhausted at the end of his spell. As a 
rule he had to go outside and sit on a bench, the perspiration 
running off him. The intensity of the heat in those days 
(1893) was not as yet relieved by the device of shielding the 
furnace with water-cooled plates. The wages of these men 
was in the neighborhood of three dollars a day, the highest 
then paid. Before the great strike it had been more. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 401 

But the men who most fascinated me were the "roughers" 
who, once the puddler had done his work and thrown his lump 
of red-hot iron out upon an open hearth, and another man 
had taken it and thrown it to a "rougher," fed it into a sec- 
ond machine which rolled or beat it into a more easily handled 
and workable form. The exact details of the process escape 
me now, but I remember the picture they presented in those 
hot, fire-lighted, noisy and sputtering rooms. Agility and 
even youth were at a premium, and a false step possibly meant 
death. I remember watching two men in the mill below Mt. 
Washington, one who pulled out billet after billet from 
furnace after furnace and threw them along the steel floor to 
the "rougher," and the latter, who, dressed only in trousers 
and a sleeveless flannel shirt, the sweat pouring from his body 
and his muscles standing out in knots, took these same and, 
with the skill and agility of a tight-rope performer, tossed 
them into the machine. He was constantly leaping about 
thrusting the red billets which came almost in a stream into 
or between the first pair of rolls for which they were intended. 
And yet before he could turn back there was always another 
on the floor behind him. The rolls into which he fed these 
billets were built in a train, side by side in line, and as they 
went through one pair they had to be seized by a "catcher" 
and shoved back through the next. Back and forth, back and 
forth they went at an ever increasing speed, until the catcher 
at the next to the last pair of rolls, seizing the end of the rod 
as it came through, still* red-hot, described with it a fiery 
circle bending it back again to enter the last roll, from which 
it passed into water. It was wonderful. 

And yet these men were not looked upon as anything ex- 
traordinary. While the places in which they worked were 
metal infernos and their toil of the most intense and exacting 
character, they were not allowed to organize to better their 
condition. The recent great victory of the steel magnates had 
settled that. In that very city and elsewhere, these mag- 
nates were rolling in wealth. Their profits were tumbling 
in so fast that they scarcely knew what to do with them. Vast 



402 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

libraries and universities were being built with their gifts. 
Immense mansions were crowded with art and historic furni- 
ture. Their children were being sent to special schools to 
be taught how to be ladies and gentlemen in a democracy 
which they contemned ; and on the other hand, these sweating 
men were being denied an additional five or ten cents an 
hour and the right to organize. If they protested or attempted 
to drive out imported strike-breakers they were fired and State 
or Federal troops were called in to protect the mills. They 
could not organize then, and they are not organized now. 

My friend Martyn, who was intensely sympathetic toward 
them, was still more sympathetic toward the men who were not 
so skillful, mere day laborers who received from one dollar to 
one-sixty-five at a time when two a day was too little to 
support any one. He grew melodramatic as he told me where 
these men lived and how they lived, and finally took me in 
order that I might see for myself. Afterward, in the course 
of my reportorial work, I came upon some of these neighbor- 
hoods and individuals, and since they are all a part of the 
great fortune-building era, and illustrate how democracy 
works in America, and how some great fortunes were built, I 
propose to put down here a few pictures of things that I 
saw. "Wages varied from one to one-sixty-five a day for the 
commonest laborer, three and even four a day for the skilled 
worker. Rents, or what the cheaper workers, who constituted 
by far the greater number, were able to pay, varied from two- 
fifteen per week, or eight-sixty per month, to four-seventy- 
two per week, or twenty per month. 

And the type of places they could secure for this ! I recall 
visiting a two-room tenement in a court, the character of 
which first opened my eyes to the type of home these workers 
endured. This court consisted of four sides with an open 
space in the center. Three of these sides were smoke-grimed 
wooden houses three stories in height; the fourth was an 
ancient and odorous wooden stable, where the horses of a 
contractor were kept. In the center of this court stood a 
circular wooden building or lavatory with ten triangular com- 
partments, each opening into one vault or cesspool. Near 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 403 

this was one hydrant, the only water-supply for all these 
homes or rooms. These two conveniences served twenty fami- 
lies, Polish, Hungarian, Slavonic, Jewish, Negro, of from 
three to five people each, living in the sixty-three rooms which 
made up the three grimy sides above mentioned. There were 
twenty-seven children in these rooms, for whom this court 
was their only playground. For twenty housewives this was 
the only place where they could string their wash-lines. For 
twenty tired, sweaty, unwashed husbands this was, aside from 
the saloon, the only near and neighborly recreation and com- 
panionship center. Here of a sweltering summer night, after 
playing cards and drinking beer, they would frequently 
stretch themselves to sleep. 

But this was not all. As waste pipes were wanting in the 
houses, heavy tubs of water had to be carried in and out, and 
this in a smoky town where a double amount of washing and 
cleaning was necessary. When the weather permitted, the 
heavy washes were done in the yard. Then the pavement of 
this populous court, covered with tubs, wringers, clothes 
baskets and pools of soapy water, made a poor playground for 
children. In addition to this, these lavatories must be used, 
and in consequence a situation was created which may be 
better imagined than explained. Many of the front windows 
of these apartments looked down on this center, which was 
only a few yards from the kitchen windows, creating a neat, 
sanitary and uplifting condition. While usually only two 
families used one of these compartments, in some other courts 
three or four families were compelled to use one, giving rise 
to indifference and a sense of irresponsibility for their condi- 
tion. While all the streets had sewers and by borough ordi- 
nance these outside vaults must be connected with them, still 
most of them were flushed only by waste water, which flowed 
directly into them from the yard faucet. When conditions 
became unbearable the vaults were washed out with a hose 
attached to the hydrant, but in winter, when there was danger 
of freezing, this was not always possible. There was not one 
indoor closet in any of these courts. 

But to return to the apartment in question. The kitchen 



404 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

was steaming with vapor from a big washtub set on a chair 
in the middle of the room. The mother, who had carried the 
water in, was trying to wash and at the same time keep the 
older of her two babies from tumbling into the tub of scald- 
ing water that was standing on the floor. On one side of the 
room was a huge puffy bed, with one feather tick to sleep on 
and another for covering. Near the window was a sewing- 
machine, in a corner a melodeon, and of course there was 
the inevitable cookstove, upon which was simmering a pot of 
soup. To the left, in the second room, were one boarder and 
the man of the house asleep. Two boarders, so I learned, were 
at work, but at night would be home to sleep in the bed now 
occupied by one boarder and the man of the house. The little 
family and their boarders, taken to help out on the rent, 
worked and lived so in order that Mr. Carnegie might give the 
world one or two extra libraries with his name plastered on 
the front, and Mr. Frick a mansion on Fifth Avenue. 

It was to Martyn and his interest that I owed still other 
views. He took me one day to a boardinghouse in which 
lived twenty-four people, all in two rooms, and yet, to my 
astonishment and confusion, it was not so bad as that other 
court, so great apparently is the value of intimate human 
contact. Few of the very poor day laborers, as Martyn ex- 
plained to me, who were young and unmarried, cared how 
they lived so long as they lived cheaply and could save a 
little. This particular boardinghouse in Homestead was in 
a court such as I have described, and consisted of two rooms, 
one above the other, each measuring perhaps 12x20. In the 
kitchen at the time was the wife of the boarding boss cooking 
dinner. Along one side of the room was an oilcloth-covered 
table with a plank bench on each side; above it was a rack 
holding a long row of white cups, and a shelf with tin knives 
and forks. Near the up-to-date range, the only real piece of 
furniture in the room, hung the buckets in which all mill men 
carried their noon or midnight meals. A crowd of men were 
lounging cheerfully about, talking, smoking and enjoying life, 
one of them playing a concertina. They were making the most 
of a brief spell before their meal and departure for work. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 405 

In the room above, as the landlord cheerfully showed us, were 
double iron bedsteads set close together and on them com- 
fortables neatly laid. 

In these two rooms lived, besides the boarding boss and his 
wife, both stalwart Bulgarians, and their two babies, twenty 
men. They were those who handled steel billets and bars, 
unloaded and loaded trains, worked in cinder pits, filled steel 
buckets with stock, and what not. They all worked twelve 
hours a day, and their reward was this and what they could 
save over and above it out of nine-sixty per week. Martyn 
said a good thing about them at the time : "I don't know how 
it is. I know these people are exploited and misused. The 
mill-owners pay them the lowest wages, the landlords exploit 
these boardinghouse keepers as well as their boarders, and 
the community which they make by their work don't give a 
damn for them, and yet they are happy, and I '11 be hanged if 
they don't make me happy. It must be that just work is 
happiness," and I agreed with him. Plenty of work, some- 
thing to do, the ability to avoid the ennui of idleness and 
useless, pensive, futile thought! 

There was another side that I thought was a part of all 
this, and that was the ' ' vice ' ' situation. There were so many 
girls who walked the streets here, and back of the Dispatch 
and postoffice buildings, as well as in the streets ranged along 
the Monongahela below Smithfield ("Water, First and Second), 
were many houses of disrepute, as large and flourishing an 
area as I had seen in any city. As I learned from the political 
and police man, the police here as elsewhere "protected" 
vice, or in other words preyed upon it. 



CHAPTER LXII 

In the meantime I was going about my general work, and 
an easy task it proved. My city editor, cool, speculative, 
diplomatic soul, soon instructed me as to the value of news 
and its limitations here. ' ' We don 't touch on labor conditions 
except through our labor man," he told me, "and he knows 
what to say. There's nothing to be said about the rich or 
religious in a derogatory sense : they 're all right in so far 
as we know. We don't touch on scandals in high life. The 
big steel men here just about own the place, so we can't. 
Some papers out West and down in New York go in for sen- 
sationalism, but we don't. I'd rather have some simple little 
feature any time, a story about some old fellow with eccentric 
habits, than any of these scandals or tragedies. Of course we 
do cover them when we have to, but we have to be mighty 
careful what we say." 

So much for a free press in Pittsburgh, A. D. 1893 ! 

And I found that the city itself, possibly by reason of the 
recent defeat administered to organized labor and the soft 
pedal of the newspapers, presented a most quiescent and 
somnolent aspect. There was little local news. Suicides, oc- 
casional drownings, a wedding or death in high society, a 
brawl in a saloon, the enlargement of a steel plant, the visit of 
a celebrity or the remarks of some local pastor, provided the 
pabulum on which the local readers were fed. Sometimes an 
outside event, such as the organization by General Coxey, of 
Canton, Ohio, of his "hobo" army, at that time moving toward 
Washington to petition congress against the doings of the 
trusts; or the dictatorial and impossible doings of Grover 
Cleveland, opposition President to the dominant party of the 
State ; or the manner in which the moribund Democratic party 
of this region was attempting to steal an office or share in the 
spoils — these and the grand comments of gentlemen in high 
financial positions here and elsewhere as to the outlook for 

406 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 407 

prosperity in the nation or the steel mills or the coal fields, 
occupied the best places in the newspapers. For a great 
metropolis as daring, forceful, economically and socially rest- 
less as this, it seemed unbelievable that it could be so quiescent 
or say so little about the colossal ambitions animating the men 
at the top. But when it came to labor or the unions, their 
restlessness or unholy anarchistic demands, or the trashy views 
of a third-rate preacher complaining of looseness in dress or 
morals, or an actor voicing his views on art, or a politician 
commenting on some unimportant phase of our life, it was 
a very different matter. These papers were then free enough 
to say their say. 

I recall that Thomas B. Reed, then Speaker of the House, 
once passed through the city and stopped off to visit some 
friendly steel magnate. I was sent to interview him and ob- 
tain his views as to "General" Coxey's army, a band of poor 
mistaken theorists who imagined that by marching to Wash- 
ington and protesting to Congress they could compel a trust- 
dictated American Senate and House to take cognizance of 
their woes. This able statesman — and he was no fool, being 
at the time in the councils and favor of the money power and 
looked upon as the probable Republican Presidential nominee 
— pretended to me to believe that a vast national menace lay 
in such a movement and protest. 

"Why, it's the same as revolution!" he ranted, washing his 
face in his suite at the Monongahela, his suspenders swaying 
loosely about his fat thighs. " It 's an unheard-of proceeding. 
For a hundred years the American people have had a fixed 
and constitutional and democratic method of procedure. They 
have their county and State and national conventions, and 
their power of instructing delegates to the same. They can 
write any plank they wish into any party platform, and com- 
pel its enforcement by their votes. Now comes along a man 
who finds something that doesn't just suit his views, and 
instead of waiting and appealing to the regular party councils, 
he organizes an army and proceeds to march on Washington." 

"But he has been able to muster only three or four hun- 



408 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

dred men all told," I suggested mildly. "He doesn't seem 
to be attracting many followers." 

"The number of his followers isn't the point," he insisted. 
' ' If one man can gather an army of five hundred, another can 
gather an army of ten or five hundred thousand. That means 
revolution. ' ' 

"Yes," I ventured. "But what about the thing of which 
they are complaining ? ' ' 

"It doesn't matter what their grievance is," he said some- 
what testily. "This is a government of law and prescribed 
political procedure. Our people must abide by that." 

I was ready to agree, only I was thinking of the easy man- 
ner in which delegates and elected representatives everywhere 
were ignoring the interests if not the mandates of the body 
politic at large and listening to the advice and needs of 
financiers and trust-builders. Already the air was full of com- 
plaints against monopoly. Trusts and combinations of every 
kind were being organized, and the people were being taxed ac- 
cordingly. All property, however come by, was sacred in 
America. The least protest of the mass anywhere was 
revolutionary, or at least the upwellings of worthless and 
never-to-be-countenanced malcontents. I could not believe 
this. I firmly believed then, as I do now, that the chains 
wherewith a rapidly developing financial oligarchy or autoc- 
racy meant to bind a liberty-deluded mass were then and 
there being forged. I felt then, as I do now, that the people 
of that day should have been more alive to their interests, that 
they should have compelled, at "Washington or elsewhere, by 
peaceable political means if possible, by dire and threatening 
uprisings if necessary, a more careful concern for their in- 
terests than any congressman or senator or governor or Presi- 
dent, at that time or since, was giving them. As I talked to 
this noble chairman of the House my heart was full of these 
sentiments, only I did not deem it of any avail to argue with 
him. I was a mere cub reporter and he was the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, but I had a keen contempt for 
the enthusiasm he manifested for law. When it came to what 
the money barons wished, the manufacturers and trust organ- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 409 

izers hiding behind a huge and extortionate tariff wall, he 
was one of their chief guards and political and congressional 
advocates. If you doubt it look up his record. 

But it was owing to this very careful interpretation of 
what was and what was not news that I experienced some of 
the most delightful newspaper hours of my life. Large fea- 
tures being scarce, I was assigned to do ' ' city hall and police, 
Allegheny," as the assignment book used to read, and with 
this mild task ahead of me I was in the habit of crossing the 
Allegheny River into the city of Allegheny, where, ensconced 
in a chair in the reporters' room of the combined city hall and 
central police station or in the Carnegie Public Library over 
the way, or in the cool, central, shaded court of the Allegheny 
General Hospital, with the head interne of which I soon made 
friends, I waited for something to turn up. As is usual with 
all city and police and hospital officials everywhere, the hope 
of favorable and often manufactured publicity animating 
them, I was received most cordially. All I had to do was to 
announce that I was from the Dispatch and assigned to this 
bailiwick, and I was informed as to anything of importance 
that had come to the surface during the last ten or twelve 
hours. If there was nothing — and usually there was not — I 
sat about with several other reporters or with the head interne 
of the hospital, or, having no especial inquiry to make, I 
crossed the street to Squire Daniels, whose office was in the 
tree-shaded square facing this civic center, and here (a squire 
being the equivalent of a petty police magistrate), inquired 
if anything had come to his notice. 

Squire Daniels, a large, bald, pink-faced individual of three 
hundredweight, used of a sunny afternoon these warm Spring 
days to sit out in front of his office, his chair tilted against 
his office wall or a tree, and, with three or four cronies, retail 
the most delicious stories of old-time political characters and 
incidents. He was a mine of this sort of thing and an im- 
mense favorite in consequence with all the newspaper men and 
politicians. I was introduced to him on my third or fourth 
day in Allegheny as he was sitting out on his tilted chair, and 
he surveyed me with a smile. 



410 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

"From the Dispatch, eh? Well, take a chair if you can 
find one; if you can't, sit on the curb or in the doorway. 
Many 's the man I seen from the Dispatch in my time. Your 
boss, Harry Gaither, used to come around here before he got 
to be city editor. So did your Sunday man, Funger. There 
ain't much news I can give you, but whatever there is you're 
welcome to it. I always treat all the boys alike," and he 
smiled. Then he proceeded with his tale, something about an 
old alderman or politician who had painted a pig once in 
order to bring it up to certain prize specifications and so won 
the prize, only to be found out later because the "specifica- 
tions" wore off. He had such a zestful way of telling his 
stories as to compel laughter. 

And then directly across the street to the east from the 
city hall was the Allegheny Carnegie library, a very handsome 
building which contained, in addition to the library, an audi- 
torium in which had been placed the usual "one of the 
largest" if not "the largest" pipe organ in the world. This 
organ had one advantage : it was supplied with a paid city 
organist, who on Sundays, Wednesdays and Saturdays enter- 
tained the public with free recitals, and so capable was he 
that seats were at a premium and standing-room only the rule 
unless one arrived far ahead of time. This manifestation of 
interest on the part of the public pleased me greatly and 
somehow qualified, if it did not atone for, Mr. Carnegie's 
indifference to the welfare of his employees. 

But I was most impressed with the forty or fifty thousand 
volumes so conveniently arranged that one could walk from 
stack to stack, looking at the labels and satisfying one's in- 
terest by browsing in the books. The place had most com- 
fortable window-nooks and chairs between stacks and in al- 
coves. One afternoon, having nothing else to do, I came here 
and by the merest chance picked up a volume entitled The 
Wild Ass's Skin by the writer who so fascinated Wandell — 
Honore de Balzac. I examined it curiously, reading a preface 
which shimmered with his praise. He was the great master of 
France. His Comedie Humaine covered every aspect of the 
human welter. His interpretations of character were exhaus- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 411 

tive and exact. His backgrounds were abundant, picturesque, 
gorgeous. In Paris his home had been turned into a museum, 
and contained his effects as they were at the time of his death. 
I turned to the first page and began reading, and from then 
on until dusk I sat in this charming alcove reading. A new 
and inviting door to life had been suddenly thrown open to 
me. Here was one who saw, thought, felt. Through him I 
saw a prospect so wide that it left me breathless — all Paris, 
all France, all life through French eyes. Here was one who 
had a tremendous and sensitive grasp of life, philosophic, tol- 
erant, patient, amused. At once I was personally identified 
with his Raphael, his Rastignae, his Bixiou, his Bianchon. 
With Raphael I entered the gaming-house in the Palais Royal, 
looked despairingly down into the waters of the Seine from 
the Pont Royal, turned from it to the shop of the dealer in 
antiques, was ignored by the perfect young lady before the 
shop of the print-seller, attended the Taillefer banquet, suf- 
fered horrors over the shrinking skin. The lady without a 
heart was all too real. It was for me a literary revolution. 
Not only for the brilliant and incisive manner with which 
Balzac grasped life and invented themes whereby to present 
it, but for the fact that the types he handled with most 
enthusiasm and skill — the brooding, seeking, ambitious begin- 
ner in life's social, political, artistic and commercial affairs 
(Rastignac, Raphael, de Rubempre, Bianchon) — were, I 
thought, so much like myself. Indeed, later taking up and 
consuming almost at a sitting The Great Man from the Prov- 
inces, Pere Goriot, Cousin Pons, Cousin Bette, it was so easy 
to identify myself with the young and seeking aspirants. The 
brilliant and intimate pictures of Parisian life, the exact flavor 
of its politics, arts, sciences, religions, social goings to and 
fro impressed me so as to accomplish for me what his im- 
aginary magic skin had done for his Raphael: transfer me 
bodily and without defect or lack to the center as well as the 
circumference of the world which he was describing. I knew 
his characters as well as he did, so magical was his skill. His 
grand and somewhat pompous philosophical deductions, his 
easy and offhand disposition of all manner of critical, social, 



412 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

political, historical, religious problems, the manner in which 
he assumed as by right of genius intimate and irrefutable 
knowledge of all subjects, fascinated and captured me as the 
true method of the seer and the genius. Oh, to possess an 
insight such as this ! To know and be a part of such a cosmos 
as Paris, to be able to go there, to work, to study, suffer, rise, 
and even end in defeat if need be, so fascinatingly alive were 
all the journeys of his puppets ! What was Pittsburgh, what 
St. Louis, what Chicago? — and yet, in spite of myself, while 
I adored his Paris, still I was obtaining a new and more 
dramatic light on the world in which I found myself. Pitts- 
burgh was not Paris, America was not France, but in truth 
they were something, and Pittsburgh at least had aspects 
which somehow suggested Paris. These charming rivers, these 
many little bridges, the sharp contrasts presented by the east 
end and the mill regions, the huge industries here and their 
importance to the world at large, impressed me more vividly 
than before. I was in a workaday, begrimed, and yet vivid 
Paris. Taillefer, Nucingen, Valentin were no different from 
some of the immense money magnets here, in their ease, lux- 
ury, power, at least the possibilities which they possessed. 

Coming out of the library this day, and day after day there- 
after, the while I rendered as little reportorial service as was 
consistent with even a show of effort, I marveled at the phys- 
ical similarity of the two cities as I conceived it, at the chance 
for pictures here as well as there. American pictures here, 
as opposed to French pictures there. And all the while I was 
riding with Lucien to Paris, with his mistress, courting Ma- 
dame Nucingen with Rastignac, brooding over the horror of 
the automatically contracting skin with Raphael, poring over 
his miseries with Goriot, practicing the horrible art of pros- 
titution with Madame Marneffe. For a period of four or five 
months I ate, slept, dreamed, lived him and his characters 
and his views and his city. I cannot imagine a greater joy 
and inspiration than I had in Balzac these Spring and Sum- 
mer days in Pittsburgh. Idyllic days, dreamy days, poetic 
days, wonderful days, the while I ostensibly did "police and 
eity hall" in Allegheny. 



CHAPTER LXIII 

It would be unfair to myself not to indicate that I rendered 
an adequate return for the stipend paid me. As a matter of 
fact, owing to the peculiar character of the local news condi- 
tions, as well as my own creative if poorly equipped literary 
instincts at the time, I was able to render just such service as 
my employers craved, and that with scarcely a wrench to 
my mental ease. For what they craved, more than news of a 
dramatic or disturbing character, was some sort of idle feature 
stuff which they could use in place of news and still interest 
their readers. The Spring time, Balzac, the very picturesque 
city itself, my own idling and yet reflective disposition, caused 
me finally to attempt a series of mood or word pictures about 
the most trivial matters — a summer storm, a spring day, a 
visit to a hospital, the death of an old switchman's dog, the 
arrival of the first mosquito — which gave me my first taste of 
what it means to be a creative writer. 

The city editor asked me one day if I could not invent some 
kind of feature, and I sat down and thought of one theme 
and another. Finally I thought of the fly as a possible sub- 
ject for an idle skit. Being young and ambitious, and having 
just crawled out of a breeding-pit somewhere, he alighted on 
the nearest fence or windowsill, brushed his head and wings 
reflectively and meditated on the chances of a livelihood or a 
career. "What would be open to a young and ambitious fly 
in a world all too crowded with flies? There were barns, of 
course, and kitchens and horses and cows and pigs, but these 
fields were overrun, and this was a sensitive and cleanly 
and meditative fly. Flying about here and there to inspect 
the world, he encountered within a modest and respectable 
home a shiny pate which seemed to offer a rather polished field 
of effort and so on. 

This idle thing which took me not more than three-quarters 

413 



414 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

of an hour to write and which I was almost afraid to submit, 
produced a remarkable change in the attitude of the office, 
as well as in my life and career. We had at this time as 
assistant city editor a small, retiring, sentimental soul, Jim 
Israels, who was one of the most gracious and approachable 
and lovable men I have ever known. He it was to whom I 
turned over my skit. He took it with an air of kindly con- 
sideration and helpfulness. 

t <■ Trying to help us out, are you ? ' ' he said with a smile, and 
then added when I predicated its worthlessness : "Well, it's 
not such an easy thing to turn out that stuff. I hope it's 
something the chief will like." 

He took it and, as I noticed, for I hung about to see, read 
it at once, and I saw him begin to smile and finally chuckle. 

"This thing's all right," he called. "You needn't worry. 
Gaither'll be pleased with this, I know," and he began to 
edit it. 

I went out to walk and think, for I had nothing to do except 
wander over to Allegheny to find out if anything had turned 
up. 

When I returned at six I was greeted by my city editor 
with a smile and told that if I would I could do that sort of 
thing as much as I liked. "Try and get up something for 
tomorrow, will you?" I said I would try. The next day, a 
Spring rain descending with wonderful clouds and a mag- 
nificent electrical display, I described how the city, dry and 
smoky and dirty, lay panting in the deadening heat and how 
out of the west came, like an answer to a prayer, this sudden 
and soothing storm, battalion upon battalion of huge clouds 
riven with great silvery flashes of light, darkening the sun 
as they came; and how suddenly, while shutters clapped and 
papers flew and office windows and doors had to be closed and 
signs squeaked and swung and people everywhere ran to 
cover, the thousands upon thousands who had been qnduring 
the heat heaved a sigh of gratitude. I described how the steel 
tenements, the homes of the rich, the office buildings, the fac- 
tories, the hospitals and jails changed under these conditions. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 415 

and then ventured to give specific incidents and pictures of 
animals and men. 

This was received with congratulations, especially from the 
assistant editor, who was more partial to anything sentimental 
than his chief. But I, feeling that I had hit upon a vein of my 
own, was not inclined to favor the moods of either but to write 
such things as appealed to me most. This I did from day to 
day, wandering out into the country or into strange neighbor- 
hoods for ideas and so varying my studies as my mood dic- 
tated. I noticed, however, that my more serious attempts 
were not so popular as the lighter and sillier things. This 
might have been a guide to me, had I been so inclined, leading 
to an easy and popular success ; but by instinct and observa- 
tion I was inclined to be interested in the larger and more 
tragic phases of life. Mere humor, such as I could achieve 
when I chose, seemed always to require for its foundation the 
most trivial of incidents, whereas huge and massive conditions 
underlay tragedy and all the more forceful aspects of life. 

But what pleased and surprised me was the manner in which 
these lighter as well as the more serious things were received 
and the change they made in my standing. Hitherto I was 
merely a newcomer being tested and by no means secure in 
my hold on this position. Now, of a sudden, my status was 
entirely changed. I was a feature man, one who had succeeded 
where others apparently had failed, and so I was made more 
than welcome. To my surprise, my city editor one day asked 
me whether I had had my lunch. I gladly availed myself of a 
chance to talk to him, and he told me a little something of 
local journalistic life, who the publisher of this paper was, 
his politics and views. The assistant editor asked me to din- 
ner. The Sunday editor, the chief political reporter, the chief 
city hall and police man grew friendly; I went to lunch or 
dinner with one or the other, was taken to the Press Club after 
midnight, and occasionally to a theater by the dramatic man. 
Finally I was asked to contribute something to the Sunday 
papers, and later still asked to help the dramatic man with 
criticisms. 

I was a little puzzled and made quite nervous though not 



416 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

vain by this sudden change. The managing 1 editor came to 
talk familiarly with me, and after him the son of the pub- 
lisher, fresh from a European trip. But when he told me how 
interested he was in the kind of thing I was doing and that he 
wished he ' ' could write like that, ' ' I remember feeling a little 
envious of him, with his fine clothes and easy manner. An 
invitation to dine at his home soothed me in no way. I never 
went. There was some talk of sending me to report a proposed 
commercial conference (at Buffalo, I believe), looking to the 
construction of a ship canal from Erie or Buffalo to Pitts- 
burgh, but it interested me not at all. I had no interest in 
those things, really not in newspaper work, and yet I scarcely 
knew what I wanted to do if not that. One thing is sure: 
I had no commercial sense whereby I might have profited by 
all this. After the second or third sketch had been published 
there was a decided list in my direction, and I might have 
utilized my success. Instead, I merely mooned and dreamed 
as before, reading at the Carnegie Library, going out on as- 
signments or writing one of these sketches and then going 
home again or to the Press Club. I gathered all sorts of data 
as to the steel magnates — Carnegie, Phipps and Frick espe- 
cially — their homes, their clubs, their local condescensions and 
superiorities. The people of Pittsburgh were looked upon as 
vassals by some of these, and their interviews on returning 
from the seashore or the mountains partook of the nature 
of a royal return. 

I remember being sent once to the Duquesne Club to inter- 
view Andrew Carnegie, fresh from his travels abroad, and 
being received by a secretary who allowed me to stand in the 
back of a room in which Mr. Carnegie, short, stocky, bandy- 
legged, a grand air of authority investing him, was addressing 
the elite of the city on the subject of America and its political 
needs. No note-taking was permitted, but I was later handed 
a typewritten address to the people of Pittsburgh and told 
that the Dispatch would be allowed to publish that. And it 
did. I smiled then, and I smile now, at the attitude of press, 
pulpit, officials of this amazing city of steel and iron where 
one and all seemed so genuflective and boot-licking, and yet 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 417 

seemed not to profit to any great degree by the presence of 
these magnates, who were constantly hinting at removing 
elsewhere unless they were treated thus and so — as though the 
life of a great and forceful metropolis depended on them alone. 



CHAPTER LXIV 

It was about this time that I began to establish cordial rela- 
tions with the short, broad-shouldered, sad-faced labor re- 
porter whom I have previously mentioned. At first he ap- 
peared to be a little shy of me, but as time passed and I seemed 
to have established myself in the favor of the paper, he be- 
came more friendly. He was really a radical at heart, but 
did not dare let it be known here. Often of a morning he 
would spend as much as two hours with me, discussing the 
nature of coal-mining and steel-making, the difficulty of ar- 
ranging wage conditions which would satisfy all the men and 
not cause friction ; but in the main he commented on the 
shrewd and cunning way in which the bosses were more and 
more overreaching their employees, preying upon their prej- 
udices by religious and political dodges, and at the same time 
misusing them shamefully through the company store, the 
short ton, the cost of mining materials, rent. At first, know- 
ing nothing about the situation, I was inclined to doubt 
whether he was as sound in these matters as he seemed to 
be. Later, as I grew in personal knowledge, I thought he 
might be too conservative, so painful did many of the things 
seem which I saw with my own eyes and his aid. 

About this time several things conspired to stir up my 
feelings in regard to New York. The Pittsburgh papers gave 
great space to New York events and affairs, much more than 
did most of the mid- Western papers. There was a millionaire 
steel colony here which was trying to connect itself with the 
so-called ' ' Four Hundred ' ' of New York, as well as the royal 
social atmosphere of England and France; and the comings 
and goings and doings of these people at Newport, New York, 
Bar Harbor, London and Paris were fully chronicled. Oc- 
casionally I was sent to one or another of these great homes 

418 






A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 419 

to ask about the details of certain marriages or proposed trips, 
and would find the people in the midst of the most luxurious 
preparations. One night, for instance, I was sent to ask a 
certain steel man about the rumored resumption or extension 
of work in one of the mills. His house was but a dot on a 
great estate, the reaching of which was very difficult. I found 
him about ten o'clock at night stepping into a carriage to be 
driven to the local station, which was at the foot of the 
grounds. Although I was going to the same station in order 
to catch a local back to the city, he did not ask me to accom- 
pany him. Instead he paused on the step of his carriage to 
say that he could not say definitely whether the work would 
be done or not. He was entirely surrounded by bags, a gun, 
a fishing basket and other paraphernalia, after which of 
course a servant was looking. When he was gone I walked 
along the same road to the same station, and saw him standing 
there. Another man came up and greeted him. 

' ' Going down to New York, George ? " he inquired. 

"No, to the Chesapeake. My lodge man tells me ducks are 
plentiful there now, and I thought I'd run down and get a 
few." 

The through train, which had been ordered to stop for 
him, rolled in and he was gone. I waited for my smoky local, 
marveling at the comfort and ease which had been already 
attained by a man of not more than forty-five years of age. 

But there were other things which seemed always to talk to 
me of New York, New York. I picked up a new weekly, the 
Standard, one evening, and found a theatrical paper of the 
most pornographic and alluring character which pretended 
to report with accuracy all the gayeties of the stage, the clubs, 
the tenderloins or white-light districts, as well as society of 
the racier and more spendthrift character. This paper spoke 
only of pleasure: yacht parties, midnight suppers, dances, 
scenes behind the stage and of blissful young stars of the 
theatrical, social and money worlds. Here were ease and 
luxury ! In New York, plainly, was all this, and I might 
go there and by some fluke of chance taste of it. I studied this 
paper by the hour, dreaming of all it suggested. 



420 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

And there was Munsey's, the first and most successful of 
all the ten-cent magazines then coming into existence and be- 
ing fed to the public by the ton. I saw it first piled in high 
stacks before a news and book store in Pittsburgh. The size 
of the pile of magazines and the price induced a cursory 
examination, although I had never even heard of it before. 
Poor as it was intellectually — and it was poor — it contained 
an entire section of highly-coated paper devoted to actresses, 
the stage and scenes from plays, and still another carrying 
pictures of beauties in society in different cities, and still 
another devoted to successful men in "Wall Street. It breathed 
mostly of New York, its social doings, its art and literary 
colonies. It fired me with an ambition to see New York. 

A third paper, Town Topics, was the best of all, a paper 
most brilliantly edited by a man of exceptional literary skill 
(C. M. S. McLellan). It related to exclusive society in New 
York, London and Paris, the houses, palaces, yachts, restau- 
rants and hotels, the goings and comings of the owners ; and al- 
though it really poked fun at all this and other forms of exist- 
ence elsewhere, still there was an element of envy and delight 
in it also which fitted my mood. It gave one the impression 
that there existed in New York, Newport and elsewhere (Lon- 
don principally) a kind of Elysian realm in which forever 
basked the elect of fortune. Here was neither want nor care. 

How I brooded over all this, the marriages and rumors of 
marriages, the travels, engagements, feasts such as a score 
of facile novelists subsequently succeeded in picturizing to 
the entertainment and disturbance of rural America. For me 
this realm was all flowers, sunshine, smart restaurants, glis- 
tering ballrooms, ease, comfort, beauty arrayed as only en- 
chantment or a modern newspaper Sunday supplement can 
array it. And while I knew that back of it must be the hard 
contentions and realities such as everywhere hold and char- 
acterize life, still I didn't know. In reading these papers I 
refused to allow myself to cut through to the reality. Life 
must hold some such realm as this, and spiritually I belonged 
to it. But I was already twenty-three, and what had I ac- 
complished? I wished most of all now to go to New York 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 421 

and enter the realm pictured by these papers. Why not? I 
might bag an heiress or capture fortune in some other way. 
I must save some "money, I told myself. Then, financially 
fortified, against starvation at least, I might reconnoiter the 
great city and — who 'knows? — perhaps conquer. Balzac's 
heroes had seemed to do so, why not I? It is written of 
the Dragon God of China that in the beginning it swallowed 
the world. 

And to cap it all about this time I had a letter from my 
good brother, in which he asked me how long I would be 
"piking" about the "West when I ought to be in New York. 
I should come this summer, when New York was at its best. 
He would show me Broadway, Manhattan Beach, a dozen 
worlds. He would introduce me to some New York newspaper 
men who would introduce me to the managers of the World 
and the Sun. (The mere mention of these papers, so over- 
awed was I by the fames of Dana and Pulitzer, frightened me.) 
I ought to be on a paper like the Sun, he said, since to him 
Dana was the greatest editor in New York. I meditated over 
this, deciding that I would go when I had more money. I 
then and there started a bank account, putting in as much 
as ten or twelve dollars each week, and in a month or two 
began to feel that sense of security which a little money gives 
one. 

Another thing which had a strange psychologic effect on me 
at the time, as indeed it appeared to have on most of the 
intelligentsia of America, was the publication in Harper's this 
spring and summer of George Du Maurier's Trilby. I have 
often doubted the import of novel-writing in general, but 
viewing the effect of that particular work on me as well as 
on others one might as well doubt the import of power or 
fame or emotion of any kind. The effect of this book was 
not so much one of great reality and insight such as Balzac 
at times managed to convey, but rather of an exotic mood or 
perfume of memory and romance conveyed by some one who 
is in love with that memory and improvising upon it as musi- 
cians do upon a theme. Instanter I saw Paris and Trilby and 
the Jew with his marvelous eyes. Trilby being hypnotized 



422 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and carried away from Little Billee seemed to me then of the 
essence of great tragedy. I myself fairly suffered, walking 
about and dreaming, the while I awaited the one or two 
final portions. I was lost in the beauty of Paris, the delight 
of studio life, and resented more than ever, as one might a 
great deprivation, the need of living in a land where there 
was nothing but work. 

And yet America and this city were fascinating enough to 
me. But because of the preponderant influence of foreign 
letters on American life it seemed that Paris and London 
must be so much better since every one wrote about them. 
Like Balzac's Great Man from, the Provinces, this book seemed 
to connect itself with my own life and the tragedy of not 
having the means to marry at this time, and of being compelled 
to wander about in this way unable to support a wife. At last 
I became so wrought up that I was quite beside myself. I 
pictured myself as a Little Billee who would eventually lose 
by poverty, as he by trickery, the thing I most craved: my 
Western sweetheart. Meditating on this I vented some of 
my misery in the form of sentimental vaporizings in my 
feature articles, which were all liked well enough but which 
seemed merely to heighten my misery. Finally, some senti- 
mental letters being exchanged between myself and my love, 
I felt an uncontrollable impulse to return and see her and 
St. Louis before I went farther away perhaps never to return. 
The sense of an irrecoverable past which had pervaded Trilby 
had, I think, something to do with this, so interfused and 
interfusing are all thoughts and moods. At any rate, having 
by now considerable influence with this paper, I proposed a 
short vacation, and the city editor, wishing no doubt to pro- 
pitiate me, suggested that the paper would be glad to provide 
me with transportation both ways. So I made haste to an- 
nounce a grand return, not only to my intended but to Mc- 
Cord, Wood and several others who were still in St. Louis. 



CHAPTER LXV 

As one looks back on youth so much of it appears ridiculous 
and maundering and without an essential impulse or direc- 
tion, and yet as I look at life itself I am not sure but that 
indirection or unimportant idlings are a part of life 's method. 
We often think we are doing some vastly important thing, 
whereas in reality we are merely marking time. At other 
times, when we appear to be marking time we are growing or 
achieving at a great rate; and so it may have been with me. 
Instead of pushing on to New York, I chose to return to St. 
Louis and grasp one more hour of exquisite romance, drink 
one more cup of love. And whether it profited me save as 
pleasure is profit I cannot tell. Only, may not pleasure be the 
ultimate profit? 

This trip to St. Louis was for me a most pivotal and de- 
ranging thing, probably a great mistake. At that time, of 
course, I could not see that. Instead, I was completely lost 
in the grip of a passion that subsequently proved detrimental 
or devastating. The reality which I was seeking to establish 
was a temporary contact only. Any really beautiful girl or 
any idyllic scene could have done for me all the things that 
this particular girl and scene could do, only thus far I had 
chanced to meet no other who could displace her. And in a 
way I knew this then, only I realized also that one beautiful 
specimen was as good a key to the lock of earthly delights 
as another. . . . Only there were so many locks or cham- 
bers to which one key would fit, and how sad, in youth at 
least, not to have all the locks, or at least a giant illusion as 
to one! 

This return began with a long hot trip in July to St. Louis, 
and then a quick change in the Union Station there at evening 
which brought me by midnight to the small town in the back- 

423 



424 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

woods of Missouri, near which she lived. It was hot. I recall 
the wide hot fields and small wooden towns of Southern Ohio 
and Indiana and this Missouri landscape in the night — the 
frogs, the katydids, the summer stars. I ached and yearned, 
not so much over her as over youth and love and the evanes- 
cence of all material fires. The spirit of youth cried and 
sang at the same time. 

The little cottages with their single yellow light shining in 
the fields through which this dusty train ran ! The perfumed 
winds ! 

At last the train stopped and left me standing at midnight 
on a wooden platform with no one to greet me. The train was 
late. A liveryman who was supposed to look after me did 
not. At a lone window sat the telegraph operator, station- 
master, baggage-agent all in one, a green shield shading his 
eyes. Otherwise the station was bare and silent save for the 
katydids in some weeds near at hand and some chirping tree- 
toads. The agent told me that a hotel was a part of this 
station, run by this railroad. Upstairs, over the baggage and 
other rooms, were a few large barn-like sleeping chambers, 
carpetless, dusty, cindery, the windows curtainless and broken 
in places, and save for some all but slatless shutters unshielded 
from the world and the night. I placed a chair against my 
door, my purse under my pillow, my bag near at hand. 
During the night several long freights thundered by, their 
headlights lighting the room • yet, lying on a mattress of straw 
and listening to the frogs and katydids outside, I slept just the 
same. The next morning I tied a handkerchief over my eyes 
and slept some more, arising about ten to continue my jour- 
ney. 

The home to which I was going was part of an old decayed 
village, once a point on a trail or stage-coach route, once the 
prospective capital of the State, but now nothing. A court- 
house and some quaint tree-shaded homes were all but lost or 
islanded in a sea of corn. I rode out a long, hot, dusty road 
and finally up a long tree-shaded lane to its very end, where 
I passed through a gate and at the far end came upon a 
worn, faded, rain-rotted house facing a row of trees in a wide 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 425 

lawn. I felt that never before had I been so impressed with 
a region and a home. It was all so simple. The house, though 
old and decayed, was exquisite. The old French windows — 
copied from where and by whom ?— reaching to the grass ; the 
long graceful rooms, the cool hall, the veranda before it, so 
very Southern in quality, the flowers about every window and 
door ! I found a home in which lived a poverty-stricken and 
yet spiritually impressive patriarch, a mother who might serve 
as an American tradition so simple and gracious was she, 
sisters and brothers who were reared in an atmosphere which 
somehow induced a gracious, sympathetic idealism and con- 
sideration. Poor as they were, they were the best of the fam- 
ilies here. The father had been an office-holder and one of the 
district leaders in his day, and one of his sons still held an 
office. A son-in-law was the district master of this entire con- 
gressional district, which included seven counties, and could 
almost make or break a congressman. All but three daughters 
were married, and I was engaged to one of the remaining 
ones. Another, too beautiful and too hoyden to think of 
any one in particular, was teaching school, or playing at it. 
A farm of forty acres to the south of the house was tilled by 
the father and two sons. 

Elsewhere I have indicated this atmosphere, but here I like 
to touch on it again. We Americans have home traditions 
or ideals, created as much by song and romance as anything 
else : My Old Kentucky Home, Suwunee River. Despite any 
willing on my part, this home seemed to fulfill the spirit of 
those songs. There was something so sadly romantic about 
it. The shade of the great trees moved across the lawn in 
stately and lengthening curves. A stream at the foot of the 
slope leading down from the west side of the house dimpled 
and whimpered in the sun. Birds sang, and there were golden 
bees about the flowers and wasps under the eaves of the house. 
Hammocks of barrel-staves, and others of better texture, were 
strung between the trees. In a nearby barn of quaint design 
were several good horses, and there were cows in the field 
adjoining. Ducks and geese solemnly padded to and fro 



426 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

between the house and the stream. The air was redolent of 
corn, wheat, clover, timothy, flowers. 

To me it seemed that all the spirit of rural America, its 
idealism, its dreams, the passion of a Brown, the courage and 
patience and sadness of a Lincoln, the dreams and courage of 
a Lee or a Jackson, were all here. The very soil smacked 
of American idealism and faith, a fixedness in sentimental 
and purely imaginative American tradition, in which I, alas! 
could not share. I was enraptured. Out of its charms and 
sentiments I might have composed an elegy or an epic, but 
I could not believe that it was more than a frail flower of 
romance. I had seen Pittsburgh. ... I had seen Lithua- 
nians and Hungarians in their "courts" and hovels. I had 
seen the girls of that city walking the streets at night. This 
profound faith in God, in goodness, in virtue and duty that I 
saw here in no wise squared with the craft, the cruelty, the 
brutality and the envy that I saw everywhere else. These par- 
ents were gracious and God-fearing, but to me they seemed 
asleep. They did not know life — could not. These boys and 
girls, as I soon found, respected love and marriage and duty 
and other things which the idealistic American still clings to. 

Outside was all this other life that I had seen of which 
apparently these people knew nothing. They were as if sus- 
pended in dreams, lotus eaters, and my beloved was lost in 
this same romance. I was thinking of her beauty, her wealth 
of hair, the color of her cheeks, the beauty of her figure, of 
what she might be to me. She might have been thinking 
of the same thing, possibly more indirectly, but also she was 
thinking of the dignity and duty and sanctity of marriage. 
For her, marriage and one love were for life. For myself, 
whether I admitted it or not, love was a thing much less 
stable. Indeed I was not thinking of marriage at all, but rather 
whether I could be happy here and now, and how much I 
could extract out of love. Or perhaps, to be just to myself, 
I was as much a victim of passion and romance as she was, 
only to the two of us it did not mean the same thing. Un- 
consciously I identified her with the beauty of all I saw, and 
at the same time felt that it was all so different from anything 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 427 

I knew or believed that I wondered how she would fit in with 
the kind of life toward which I was moving. How overcome 
this rigidity in duty and truth ? 

Both of us being inflamed, it was the most difficult thing for 
me to look upon her and not crave her physically, and, as she 
later admitted, she felt the same yearning toward me. At the 
time, however, she was all but horrified at a thought which 
ran counter to all the principles impressed upon her since 
early youth. There was thus set up between us in this de- 
lightful atmosphere a conflict between tradition and desire. 
The hot faint breezes about the house and in the trees seemed 
to whisper of secret and forbidden contact. The perfumes 
of the thickly grown beds of flowers, the languorous sultry 
heat of the afternoon and night, the ripening and blooming 
fields beyond, the drowsy, still, starry nights with their hum 
of insects and croak of frogs and the purrs and whimpers 
and barks of animals, seemed to call for but one thing. There 
was about her an intense delight in living. No doubt she 
longed as much to be seized as I to seize her, and yet there 
was a moral elusiveness which added even more to the chase. 
I wished to take her then and not wait, but the prejudices of 
a most careful rearing frightened and deterred her. And yet 
I shall always feel that the impulse was better than the 
forces which confuted and subsequently defeated it. For then 
was the time to unite, not years later when, however much 
the economic and social and religious conditions which are 
supposed to surround and safeguard such unions had been 
fulfilled, my zest for her, and no doubt hers in part for me, 
had worn away. 

Love should act in its heat, not when its bank account is 
heavy. The chemic formula which works to reproduce the 
species, and the most vital examples at that, is not concerned 
with the petty local and social restraints which govern all 
this. Life if it wants anything wants children, and healthy 
ones, and the weighing and binding rules which govern their 
coming and training may easily become too restrictive. Na- 
ture 's way is correct, her impulses sound. The delight of pos- 
sessing my fiancee then would have repaid her for her fears, 



428 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and me for ruthlessness if I had taken her. A clearer and a 
better grasp of life would have been hers and mine. jThe 
coward sips little of life, the strong man drinks deep. Old 
prejudices, must always fall, and life must always change. It 
is the law.] 



CHAPTER LXVI 

And so this romance ended for me. At the time, of course, 
I did not know it ; on leaving her I was under the impression 
that I was more than ever attached to her. In the face of 
this postponement, life took on a grayer and more disappoint- 
ing aspect. To be forced to wait when at that moment, if 
ever, was the time! 

And yet I told myself that better days were surely in store. 
I would return East and in some way place myself so that 
soon we might be reunited. It was a figment of hope. By the 
time I was finally capable of maintaining her economically, my 
earlier mood had changed. That hour which we had known, 
or might have known, had gone forever. I had seen more of 
life, more of other women, and although even then she was 
by no means unattractive the original yearning had vanished. 
She was now but one of many, and there were those who were 
younger and more sophisticated, even more attractive. 

And yet, before I left her, what days ! The sunshine ! The 
lounging under the trees! The drowsy summer heat! The 
wishing for what might not be ! Having decided that her wish 
was genuine and my impulse to comply with it wise, I stood 
by it, wishing that it might be otherwise. I consoled myself 
thinly with the thought that the future must bring us together, 
and then left, journeying first to St. Louis and later to New 
York. For while I was here that letter from my brother 
which urged me once more to come to New York was for- 
warded to me. Just before leaving Pittsburgh I had sent him 
a collection of those silly "features" I had been writing, and 
he also was impressed. I must come to New York. Some 
metropolitan paper was the place for me and my material. 
Anyhow, I would enjoy visiting there in the summer time 
more than later. I wired him that I would arrive at a certain 
time, and then set out for St. Louis and a visit among my old 
newspaper friends there. 

429 



430 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

I do not know how most people take return visits, but I 
have often noted that it has only been as I have grown older 
and emotionally less mobile that they have become less and 
less significant to me. In my earlier years nothing could have 
been more poignant or more melancholy than my thoughts on 
any of these occasions. Whenever I returned to any place in 
which I had once lived and found things changed, as they 
always were, I was fairly transfixed by the oppressive sense 
of the evanescence of everything; a mood so hurtful and 
dark and yet with so rich if sullen a luster that I was left 
wordless with pain. I was all but crucified at realizing how 
unimportant I was, how nothing stayed but all changed. 
Scenes passed, never to be recaptured. Moods came and 
friendships and loves, and were gone forever. Life was per- 
petually moving on. The beautiful pattern of which each of 
us, but more especially myself, was a part, was changing 
from day to day, so that things which were an anchor and a 
comfort and delight yesterday were tomorrow no more. And 
though perhaps innately I desired change, or at least appro- 
priate and agreeable changes for myself, I did not wish this 
other, this exterior world to shift, and that under my very 
eyes. 

The most haunting and disturbing thought always was 
that hourly I was growing older. Life was so brief, such a 
very little cup at best, and so soon, whatever its miserable 
amount or character, it would be gone. Some had strength 
or capacity or looks or fortune, or all, at their command, and 
then all the world was theirs to travel over and explore. 
Beauty and ease were theirs, and love perhaps, and the com- 
panionship of interesting and capable people; but I, poor 
waif, with no definite or arresting skill of any kind, not even 
that of commerce, must go fumbling about looking in upon 
life from the outside, as it were. Beautiful women, or so I 
argued, were drawn to any but me. The great opportunities 
of the day in trade and commerce were for any but me. I 
should never have a fraction of the means to do as I wished or 
to share in the life that I most craved. I was an Ishmael, a 
wanderer. 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 431 

In St. Louis I was oppressed beyond words. Of the news- 
paper men who had been living on the same floor with me in 
Broadway there was not one left. At the Globe-Democrat al- 
ready reigned a new city editor. My two friends, Wood and 
McCord, while delighted to see me, told me of those who had 
already gone and seemed immersed in many things that had 
arisen since I had gone and were curious as to why I should 
have returned at all. I hung about for a day or two, wonder- 
ing all the while why I did so, and then took the train going 
East. 

Of all my journeys thus far this to New York was the most 
impressive. It took on at once, the moment I left St. Louis, 
the character of a great adventure, for it was all unknown 
and enticing. For years my mind had been centered on it. 
True to the law of gravitation, its pull was in proportion to 
its ever increasing size. As a boy in Indiana, and later in 
Chicago, I had read daily papers sent on from New York by 

my sister E , who lived there. In Chicago, owing to a 

rivalry which existed on Chicago's part (not on New York's, 
I am sure), the papers were studded with invidious comments 
which, like all poorly based criticism, only served to emphasize 
the salient and impressive features of the greater city. It had 
an elevated road that ran through its long streets on stilts of 
steel and carried hundreds of thousands if not millions in 
the miniature trains drawn by small engines. It was a long, 
heavily populated island surrounded by great rivers, and was 
America's ocean door to Europe. It had the great Brooklyn 
Bridge, then unparalleled anywhere, Wall Street, Jay Gould, 
Cornelius Vanderbilt, a huge company of millionaires. It 
had Tammany Hall, the Statue of Liberty, unveiled not so 
many years before (when I was a boy in Southern Indiana), 
Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Opera House, the 
Horse Show. It was the center and home of fashionable 
society, of all fixed and itinerant actors and actresses. All 
great theatrical successes began there. Of papers of largest 
circulation and greatest fame, it had nearly all. As an igno- 
rant understrapper I had often contended, and that noisily, 
with various passing atoms of New York, as condescending 



432 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

as I was ignorant and stubborn, as to the relative merits of 
New York and Chicago, New York and St. Louis ! There could 
not be so much difference! There were many great things 
in these minor places ! Some day, surely, Chicago would out- 
strip New York ! . . . Well, I lived to see many changes 
and things, but not that. Instead I saw the great city grow 
and grow, until it stood unrivaled, for size and force and 
wealth at least, anywhere. 

And now after all these tentative adventurings I was at last 
to enter it. Although I was moderately well-placed in Pitts- 
burgh and not coming as a homeless, penniless seeker, still 
even now I was dreadfully afraid of it — why, I cannot say. 
Perhaps it was because it was so immense and mentally so 
much more commanding. Still I consoled myself with the 
thought that this was only a visit and I was to have a chance 
to explore it without feeling that I had to make my way then 
and there. 

I recall clearly the hot late afternoon in July when, after 
stopping off at Pittsburgh to refresh myself and secure a 
change of clothing, I took the train for New York. I noted 
with eager, hungry eyes a succession of dreary forge and min- 
ing towns, miles of blazing coke ovens paralleling the track 
and lighting these regions with a lurid glow after dusk, huge 
dark hills occasionally twinkling with a feeble light or two. 
I spent a half -wakeful night in the berth, dreaming and medi- 
tating in a nervous chemic way. Before dawn I was awake 
and watching our passage through Philadelphia, then Tren- 
ton, New Brunswick, Metuchen, Menlo Park, Rahway, Eliza- 
beth and Newark. Of all of these, save only Menlo Park, the 
home of Edison, who was then invariably referred to by jour- 
nalists and paragraphers as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," 
I knew nothing. 

As we neared New York at seven the sky was overcast, and 
at Newark it began to drizzle. When I stepped down it was 
pouring, and there at the end of a long trainshed, the im- 
mense steel and glass affair that once stood in Jersey City 
opposite Cortlandt Street of New York, awaited my fat and 
smiling brother, as sweet-faced and gay and hopeful as a 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 433 

child. At once, he began as was his way, a patter of jests and 
inquiries as to my trip, then led me to a ferry entrance, one 
of a half dozen in a row, through which, as through the pro- 
scenium arch of a stage, I caught my first glimpse of the great 
Hudson. A heavy mist of rain was suspended over it through 
which might be seen dimly the walls of the great city beyond. 
Puffing and squatty tugs, as graceful as fat ducks, attended 
by overhanging plumes of smoke, chugged noisily in the fore- 
ground of water. At the foot of the outline of the city 
beyond, only a few skyscrapers having as yet appeared, lay a 
fringe of ships and docks and ferry houses. No ferry boat 
being present, we needs must wait for one labeled Desbrosses, 
as was labeled the slip in which we stood. 

But I was talking to my brother and learning of his life 

here and of that of my sister E , with whom he was living. 

The ferry boat eventually came into the slip and discharged a 
large crowd, and we, along with a vast company of commuters 
and travelers, entered it. Its center, as I noted, was stuffed 
with vehicles of all sizes and descriptions, those carrying 
light merchandise as well as others carrying coal and stone 
and lumber and beer. I can recall to this hour the odor of 
ammonia and saltpeter so characteristic of the ferry boats 
and ferry houses, the crowd in the ferry house on the New 
York side waiting to cross over once we arrived there, and the 
miserable little horse-cars, then still trundling along West 
Street and between Fourteenth and Broadway and the fer- 
ries, and Gansevoort Market. These were drawn by one horse, 
and you deposited your fare yourself. 

And this in the city of elevated roads! 

But the car which we boarded had two horses. We traveled 
up West Street from Desbrosses to Christopher and thence 
along that shabby old thoroughfare to Sixth Avenue and 
Fourteenth Street, where we changed. At first, aside from 
the sea and the boats and the sense of hugeness which goes 
with immense populations everywhere, I was disappointed by 
the seeming meanness of the streets. Many of them were 
still paved with cobblestones, like the oldest parts of St. 
Louis and Pittsburgh. The buildings, houses and stores alike, 



434 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

were for the most part of a shabby red in color and varying 
in height from one to six stories, most of them of an aged 
and contemptible appearance. This was, as I soon learned 
from my serene and confident brother, an old and shabby 
portion of the city. These horse-cars, in fact, were one of 
the jokes of the city, but they added to its variety. "Don't 
think that they haven't anything else. This is just the New 
York way. It has the new and the old mixed. Wait '11 you're 
here a little while. You'll be like everybody else — there'll 
be just one place : New York. ' ' 

And so it proved after a time. 

The truth was that the city then, for the first time in a half 
century if not longer, was but beginning to emerge from a 
frightful period of misrule at the hands of as evil a band 
of mercenaries as ever garroted a body politic. It was still 
being looted and preyed upon in a most shameful manner. 
Graft and vice stalked hand-in-hand. Although Tammany 
Hall, the head and center of all the graft and robbery and 
vice and crime protection, had been delivered a stunning 
blow by a reform wave which had temporarily ousted it and 
placed reform officials over the city, still the grip of that 
organization had not relaxed. The police and all minor 
officials, as well as the workmen of all departments were 
still, under the very noses of the newly elected officials, per- 
haps with their aid, collecting graft and tribute. The Rever- 
end Doctor Parkhurst was preaching, like Savonarola, the de- 
struction of these corruptions of the city. 

When I arrived, the streets were not cleaned or well-lighted, 
their ways not adequately protected or regulated as to traffic. 
Uncollected garbage lay in piles, the while the city was paying 
enormous sums for its collection; small and feeble gas-jets 
fluttered, when in other cities the arc-light had for fifteen 
years been a commonplace. As we dragged on, on this slow- 
moving car, the bells on the necks of the horses tinkling rhyth- 
mically, I stared and commented. 

"Well, you can't say that this is very much." 

"My boy," cautioned my good and cheerful brother, "you 
haven't seen anything yet. This is just an old part of New 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 435 

York. Wait '11 you see Broadway and Fifth Avenue. We're 
just coming this way because it's the quickest way home." 

When we reached Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue I 
was very differently impressed. We had traveled for a little 
way under an elevated road over which trains thundered, 
and as we stepped down I beheld an impressively wide 
thoroughfare, surging even at this hour in the morning with 
people. Here was Macy's, and northward stretched an area 
which I was told was the shopping center of the vast metrop- 
olis: Altaian's, Ehrich's, O'Neill's, Adams', Simpson-Craw- 
ford's, all huge stores and all in a row lining the west side 
of the street. We made our way across Fifteenth Street 
to the entrance of a narrow brownstone apartment house and 
ascended two flights, waiting in a rather poorly-lighted hall 
for an answer to our ring. The door was eventually opened 
by my sister, whom I had not seen since my mother's death 
four years before. She had become stout. The trim beauty 
for which a very few years before she had been notable had 
entirely disappeared. I was disappointed at first, but was 
soon reassured and comforted by an inherently kindly and 
genial disposition, which expressed itself in much talking and 
laughing. 

"Why, Theodore, I'm so glad to see you! Take off your 
things. Did you have a pleasant trip ? George, here 's Theo- 
dore. This is my husband, Theodore. Come on back, you 
and Paul," so she rattled on. 

I studied her husband, whom I had not seen before, a 
dark and shrewd and hawklike person who seemed to be al- 
ways following me with his eyes. He was an American of 
middle-Western extraction but with a Latin complexion and 
Latin eyes. 

E 's two children were brought forward, a boy and a 

girl four and two years of age respectively. A breakfast 
table was waiting, at which Paul had already seated himself. 

"Now, my boy," he began, "this is where you eat real 
food once more. No jerkwater hotels about this! No Pitts- 
burgh newspaper restaurants about this ! Ah, look at the bis- 
cuit! Look at the biscuit!" as a maid brought in a creamy 



436 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

plateful. ' ' And here 's steak — steak and brown gravy and bis- 
cuit ! Steak and brown gravy and biscuit ! ' ' He rubbed his 
hands in joy. "I'll bet you haven't seen anything like this 
since you left home. Ah, good old steak and gravy!" His 
interest in food was always intense. 

"It's been many a day since I've had such biscuit and 
gravy, E ," I observed. 

" 'It's been many a day since I've had such biscuit and 
gravy, E ,' " mocked my brother. 

' ' Get out, you ! ' ' chimed in my sister. ' ' Just listen to him, 
the old snooks ! I can 't get him out of the kitchen, can I, 

George? He's always eating. 'It's been many a day ' 

Ho! Ho!" 

"I thought you were dieting?" I inquired. 

" So I am, but you don 't expect me not to eat this morning, 
do you ? I 'm doing this to welcome you. ' ' 

1 ' Some welcome ! " I scoffed. 

Our chatter became more serious as the first glow of wel- 
come wore off. During it all I was never free of a sense 
of the hugeness and strangeness of the city and the fact that at 
last I was here. And in this immense and far-flung thing 
my sister had this minute nook. From where I sat I could 
hear strange moanings and blowings which sounded like fog- 
horns. 

"What is that noise?" I finally asked, for to me it was 
eerie. 

' ' Boats — tugs and vessels in the harbor. There 's a fog on, ' ' 
explained H , E 's husband. 

I listened to the variety of sounds, some far, some near, 
some mellow, some hoarse. "How far away are they?" 

"Anywhere from one to ten miles." 

I stopped and listened again. Suddenly the full majesty 
of the sea sweeping about this island at this point caught 
me. The entire city was surrounded by water. Its great 
buildings and streets were all washed about by that same 
sea-green salty flood which I had seen coming over from 
Jersey City, and beyond were the miles and miles of dank 
salt meadows, traversed by railroads. Huge liners from 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 437 

abroad were even now making their way here. At its shores 
were ranged in rows great vessels from Europe and all other 
parts of the world, all floating quietly upon the bosom of this 
great river. There were tugs and small boats and sailing 
vessels, and beyond all these, eastward, the silence, the maj- 
esty, the deadly earnestness of the sea. 

"Do you ever think how wonderful it is to have the sea 
so close?" I asked. 

"No, I can't say that I do," replied my brother-in-law. 

"Nor I," said my sister. "You get used to all those things 
here, you know." 

"It's wonderful, my boy," said my brother, as usual help- 
fully interested. He invariably seemed to approve of all my 
moods and approaches to sentiment, and, like a mother who 
admires and spoils a child, was anxious to encourage and 
indulge me. "Great subject, the sea." 

I could not help smiling, he was so naif and simple and 
intellectually innocent and sweet. 

"It's a great city," I said suddenly, the full import of 
it all sweeping over me. "I think I'd like to live here." 

"Didn't I tell you! Didn't I tell you!" exclaimed my 
brother gayly. "They all fall for it! Now it's the ocean 
vessels that get him. You take my advice, my boy, and move 
down here. The quicker the better for you." 

I replied that I might, and then tried to forget the vessels 
and their sirens, but could not. The sea! The sea! And 
this great city! Never before was I so anxious to explore a 
city, and never before so much in awe of one either. It seemed 
so huge and powerful and terrible. There was something 
about it which made me seem useless and trivial. "Whatever 
one might have been elsewhere, what could one be here? 



CHAPTER LXVII 

My sister's husband having something to do with this nar- 
rative, I will touch upon his history as well as that of my 

sister. In her youth E was one of the most attractive 

of the girls in our family. She never had any intellectual or 
artistic interests of any kind ; if she ever read a book I never 
heard of it. But as for geniality, sympathy, industry, fair- 
mindedness and an unchanging and self-sacrificing devotion 
to her children, I have never known any one who could rival 
her. With no adequate intellectual training, save such as is 
provided by the impossible theories and teachings of the 
Catholic Church, she was but thinly capacitated to make her 
way in the world. 

At eighteen or nineteen she had run away and gone to 
Chicago, where she had eventually met H , who had appar- 
ently fallen violently in love with her. He was fifteen years 
older than she and moderately well versed in the affairs of 
this world. At the time she met him he was the rather suc- 
cessful manager of a wholesale drug company, reasonably 
well-placed socially, married and the father of two or three 
children, the latter all but grown to maturity. They eloped, 
going direct to New York. 

This was a great shock to my mother, who managed to con- 
ceal it from my father although it was a three-days' wonder 
in the journalistic or scandal world of Chicago. Nothing 
more was heard of her for several years, when a dangerous 
illness overtook my mother in Warsaw and E came hurry- 
ing back for a few days ' visit. This was followed by another 
silence, which was ended by the last illness and death of my 
mother in Chicago, and she again appeared, a distrait and 
hysteric soul. I never knew any one to yield more completely 
to her emotions than she did on this occasion ; she was almost 
fantastic in her grief. During all this time she had been 

438 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 439 

living in New York, and she and her husband were supposed 
to be well off. Later, talking to Paul in St. Louis, I gathered 

that H , while not so successful since he had gone East, 

was not a bad sort and that he had managed to connect him- 
self with politics in some way, and that they were living com- 
fortably in Fifteenth Street. But when I arrived there I 
found that they were by no means comfortable. The Tam- 
many administration, under which a year or two before he had 
held an inspectorship of some kind, had been ended by the 
investigations of the Lexow Committee, and he was now with- 
out work of any kind. Also, instead of having proved a faith- 
ful and loving husband, he had long since wearied of his wife 
and strayed elsewhere. Now, having fallen from his success, 
he was tractable. Until the arrival of my brother Paul, who 
for reasons of sympathy had agreed to share the expenses 

here during the summer season, he had induced E to 

rent rooms, but for this summer this had been # given up. With 

the aid of my brother and some occasional work H still 

did they were fairly comfortable. My sister if not quite happy 
was still the devoted slave of her children and a most 
pathetically dependent housewife. Whatever fires or vanities 
of her youth had compelled her to her meteoric career, she had 
now settled down and was content to live for her children. 
Her youth was over, love gone. And yet she managed to 
convey an atmosphere of cheer and hopefulness. 

My brother Paul was in the best of spirits. He held a fair 
position as an actor, being the star in a road comedy and 
planning to go out the ensuing fall in a new one which he had 
written for himself and which subsequently enjoyed many 
successful seasons on the road. In addition, he was by way of 
becoming more and more popular nationally as a song-writer. 
Also as I have said, he had connected himself as a third part- 
ner in a song-publishing business which was to publish his 
own and other songs, and this, despite its smallness, was show- 
ing unmistakable signs of success. 

The first thing he did this morning was to invite me to come 
and see this place, and about noon we walked across Fifteenth 
Street and up Sixth Avenue, then the heart of the shopping 



440 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

district, to Twentieth Street and thence east to between Fifth 
Avenue and Broadway, where in a one-time fashionable but 
now decayed dwelling, given over to small wholesale ventures, 
his concern was housed on the third floor. This was almost 
the center of a world of smart shops near several great hotels : 
the Continental, Bartholdi, and the Fifth Avenue. Next 
door were Lord & Taylor. Below this, on the next corner, at 
Nineteenth and Broadway, was the Gorham Company, and 
below that the Ditson Company, a great music house, Arnold, 
Constable & Company and others. There were excellent res- 
taurants and office buildings crowding out an older world of 
fashion. I remember being impressed with the great number 
of severe brownstone houses with their wide flights of stone 
isteps, conservatories and porte-cocheres. Fifth Avenue and 
Twentieth Street were filled with handsome victorias and 
coaches. 

Going into my brother's office I saw a sign on the door 
which read: 'Rowley, Haviland & Company, and underneath, 
Wing & Sons, Pianos. 

1 ' Are you the agent for a piano ? " I inquired. 

' ' Huh-uh. They let us have a practice piano in return for 
that sign." 

When I met his partners I was impressed with the prob- 
ability of success which they seemed to suggest and which came 
true. The senior member, Howley, was a young, small, goggle- 
eyed hunchback with a mouthful of protruding teeth, and 
hair as black as a crow, and piercing eyes. He had long thin 
arms and legs which, because of his back, made him into a 
kind of spider of a man, and he went about spider-wise, laugh- 
ing and talking, yet always with a heavy "Scutch" burr. 

"We're joost aboot gettin' un our feet here nu," he said to 
me, his queer twisted face screwed up into a grimace of satis- 
faction and pride, ' ' end we hevn 't ez yet s 'mutch to show ye. 
But wuth a lettle time I 'm a-theenkin ' ye '11 be seein ' theengs 
a-lookin ' a leetle bether. ' ' 

I laughed. ' ' Say, ' ' I said to Paul when Howley had gone 
about some work, ' ' how could you fail with him around ? He's 
as smart as a whip, and they're all good luck anyhow." I 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 441 

was referring to the superstition which counts all hunchbacks 
as lucky to others. 

"Yes," said my brother. "I know they're lucky, and he's 
as straight and honest as they make 'em. I'll always get a 
square deal here," and then he began to tell me how his old 
publisher, by whom Howley had been employed, had 
"trimmed" him, and how this youth had put him wise. Then 
and there had begun this friendship which had resulted in this 
partnership. 

The space this firm occupied was merely one square room, 
twenty by twenty, and in one corner of this was placed the 
free "try-out" piano. In another, between two windows, two 
tables stood back to back, piled high with correspondence. A 
longer table was along one side of a wall and was filled with 
published music, which was being wrapped and shipped. On 
the walls were some wooden racks or bins containing ' ' stock, ' ' 
the few songs thus far published. Although only a year old, 
this firm already had several songs which were beginning to 
attract attention, one of them entitled On the Sidewalks of 
New York. By the following summer this song was being 
sung and played all over the country and in England, an 
international "hit." This office, in this very busy center, 
cost them only twenty dollars a month, and their "overhead 
expeenses," as Howley pronounced it, were "juist nexta 
nothin '. " I could see that my good brother was in competent 
hands for once. 

And the second partner, who arrived just as we were sitting 
down at a small table in a restaurant nearby for lunch, was 
an equally interesting youth whose personality seemed to spell 
success. At this time he was still connected as "head of 
stock," whatever that may mean, with that large wholsesale 
and retail music house the Ditson Company, at Broadway 
and Eighteenth Street. Although a third partner in this new 
concern, he had not yet resigned his connection with the other 
and was using it, secretly of course, to aid him and his firm 
in disposing of some of their wares. He was quite young, 
not more than twenty-seven, very quick and alert in manner, 
very short of speech, avid and handsome, a most attractive 



442 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and clean-looking man. He shot out questions and replies as 
one might bullets out of a gun. " Didy 'seeDrake ? ' ' "What 
'd'esay?" "AnynewsfromBaker?" ' ' Thedevily 'say ! " "Y' 
don 'tmeanit ! ' ' 

I was moved to study him with the greatest care. Out of 
many anywhere, I told myself, I would have selected him as 
a pushing and promising and very self -centered person, but 
by no means disagreeable. Speaking of him later, as well as 
of Howley, my brother once said: "Y'see, Thee, New York's 
the only place you could do a thing like this. This is the only 
place you could get fellows with their experience. Howley 
used to be with my old publisher, Woodward, and he's the one 
that put me wise to the fact that Woodward was trimming me. 
And Haviland was a friend of his, working for Ditson. ' ' 

From the first, I had the feeling that this firm of which 
my brother was a part would certainly be successful. There 
was something about it, a spirit of victory and health and joy 
in work and life, which convinced me that these three would 
make a go of it. I could see them ending in wealth, as they 
did before disasters of their own invention overtook them. 
But that was still years away and after they had at least eaten 
of the fruits of victory. 

As a part of this my initiation into the wonders of the city 
Paul led me into what he insisted was one of the wealthiest 
and most ornate of the Roman Churches in New York, St. 
Francis Xavier in Sixteenth Street, from which he was subse- 
quently buried. Standing in this, he told me of some Jesuit 
priest there, a friend of his, who was comfortably berthed and 
"a good sport into the bargain, Thee, a bird." However, hav- 
ing had my fill of Catholicism and its ways, I was not so much 
impressed, either by his friend or his character. But Sixth 
Avenue in this sunshine did impress me. It was the crowded 
center of nearly all the great stores, at least five, each a block 
in length, standing in one immense line on one side of the 
street. The carriages! The well-dressed people! Paul 
pointed out to me the windows of Altman's on the west side 
of the street at Eighteenth and said it was the most exclusive 
store in America, that Marshall Field & Company of Chicago 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 443 

was as nothing, and I had the feeling from merely looking 
at it that this was true ; it was so well-arranged and spacious. 
Its windows, in which selected materials were gracefully 
draped and contrasted, bore out this impression. There were 
many vehicles of the better sort constantly pausing at its doors 
to put down most carefully dressed women and girls. I 
marveled at the size and wealth of a city which could support 
so many great stores all in a row. 

Because of the heat my brother insisted upon calling a han- 
som cab to take us to Fourteenth and Broadway, where we 
were to begin our northward journey. Just south of Union 
Square at Thirteenth Street was the old Star Theater of 
which he said : ' ' There you have it. That used to be Lester 
Wallack's Theater twenty years ago — the great Lester Wal- 
lack. There was an actor, my boy, a great actor ! They talk 
about Mansfield and Barrett and Irving and "Willard and all 
these other people today. All good, my boy, all good, but not 
in it with him, Theodore, not in it. This man was a genius. 
And he packed 'em too. Many a time I've passed this place 
when you couldn't get by the door for the crowd." And he 
proceeded to relate that in the old days, when he first came 
to New York, all the best part of the theatrical district was 
still about and below Union Square — Niblo's, the old London 
on the Bowery, and what not. 

I listened. What had been had been. It might all have been 
very wonderful but it was so no longer, all done and gone. 
I was new and strange, and wished to see only what was new 
and wonderful now. The sun was bright on Union Square 
now. This was a newer world in which we were living, he 
and I, this day. The newest wave of the sea invariably ob- 
literates the one that has gone before. And that was only 
twenty years ago and it has all changed again. 

North of this was the newer Broadway — the Broadway of 
the current actor, manager and the best theaters — and fresh, 
smart, gay, pruned of almost every trace of poverty or care. 
Tiffany's was at Fifteenth and Broadway, its windows glitter- 
ing with jewels; Brentano's, the booksellers, were at Six- 
teenth on the west side of Union Square; and Sarony, the 



444 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

photographer, was between Fifteenth and Sixteenth, a great 
gold replica of his signature indicating his shop. The Cen- 
tury Company, to which my brother called my attention as an 
institution I might some day be connected with, so great was 
his optimism and faith in me, stood on the north side of Union 
Square at Seventeenth. At Nineteenth and Broadway were 
the Gorham Company, and Arnold, Constable & Company. 
At Twentieth was Lord & Taylor's great store, adjoining the 
old building in which was housed my brother's firm. Also, at 
this street, stood the old Continental Hotel, a popular and 
excellent restaurant occupying a large portion of its lower 
floor which became a part of my daily life later. At Twenty- 
first Street was then standing one of the three great stores of 
Park & Tilford. At Twenty-third, on the east side of the 
street, facing Madison Square, was another successful hotel, 
the Bartholdi, and opposite it,, on the west side, was the site 
of the Flatiron Building. 

Across Madison Square, its delicate golden-brown tower 
soaring aloft and alone, no huge buildings then as now to 
dwarf it, stood Madison Square Garden, Diana, her arrow 
pointed to the wind, giving naked chase to a mythic stag, her 
mythic dogs at her heels, high in the blue air above. The 
west side of Broadway, between Twenty-third and Twenty- 
fourth, was occupied by the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the home, 
as my brother was quick to inform me, of Senator Piatt, the 
Republican boss of the State, who with Croker divided the 
political control of the State and who here held open court, 
the famous "Amen Corner," where his political henchmen 
were allowed to ratify all his suggestions. It was somewhere 
within. Between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth on the same 
side of the street were two more hotels, the Albemarle and 
the Hoffman House. Just north of this, at Twenty-seventh 
and Broadway, on the east side of the street and running 
through to Fifth Avenue, was Delmonico's. Into this we 
now ventured, my good brother hailing genially some ac- 
quaintance who happened to be in charge of the floor at the 
moment. The waiter who served us greeted him familiarly. 
I stared in awe at its pretentious and ornate furniture, its 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 445 

noble waiters and the something about it which seemed to 
speak of wealth and power. How easily five cents crooks the 
knee to five million! 

A block qr two north of this was the old Fifth Avenue 
Theater, then a theater of the first class but later devoted to 
vaudeville. At Twenty-ninth was the Gilsey House, one of 
the earliest homes of this my Rialto-loving brother. At Thir- 
tieth and Broadway, on the east side, stood Palmer 's Theater, 
famous for its musical and beauty shows. At Thirty-first 
and Broadway, on the west side of the street, stood Augustus 
Daly 's famous playhouse, its facade suggestive of older homes 
remodeled to this new use. And already it was coming to be 
passe. Weber & Fields' had not even appeared. And in my 
short span it appeared and disappeared and became a memory ! 
Between Twenty-eighth and Thirty-fourth were several more 
important hotels: The Grand, The Imperial; and between 
Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets, in Sixth Avenue, 
was the old Manhattan Theater, at that time the home of 
many successes, but also, like Daly's, drawing to the end of 
a successful career. 

In Thirty-fourth, west of Broadway (later a part of the 
Macy store site), was Koster & Bial's Music Hall, managed 
by a man who subsequently was to become widely known but 
who was then only beginning to rise, Oscar Hammerstein. 
And around the corner, in Broadway at Thirty-fifth, was a 
very successful theater, the Herald Square, facing the unique 
and beautiful Herald building. Beyond that in Thirty-fifth, 
not many feet east of Sixth Avenue, was the Garrick, or the 
Lyceum as it was then known, managed by Daniel Frohman. 
Above these, at Thirty-sixth, on the west side, was the Marl- 
borough, at which later, in his heyday, my brother chose to live. 
At Thirty-eighth, on the southeast corner, stood the popular 
and exclusive Normandie, one of the newer hotels, and at the 
northeast corner of this same intersection, the new and impos- 
ing Knickerbocker Theater. At Thirty-ninth was the far- 
famed Casino, with its choruses of girls, the Mecca of all 
night-loving Johnnies and rowdies ; and between Thirty -ninth 
and Fortieth, on the west side, the world-famed Metropolitan 



446 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Opera House, still unchanged save for a restaurant in its 
northern corner. At Fortieth over the way stood the Empire 
Theater, with its stock company, which included the Drews, 
Favershams and what not ; and in this same block was the fa- 
mous Browne's Chop House, a resort for Thespians and night- 
lovers. At Forty-second and Broadway, the end of all Rialto- 
dom for my brother, and from which he turned sadly and said : 
"Well, here's the end," stood that Mecca of Meccas, the new 
Hotel Metropole, with its restaurant opening on three streets, 
its leathern seats backed to its walls, its high open windows, 
an air of super-wisdom as to all matters pertaining to sport 
and the theater pervading it. This indeed was the extreme 
northern limit of the white-light district, and here we paused 
for a drink and to see and be seen. 

How well I remember it all — the sense of ease and well- 
being that was over this place, and over all Broadway; the 
loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes, the diamonds, 
the hot socks, the air of security and well-being, assumed by 
those who had won an all-too-brief hour in that pretty, petty 
world of make-believe and pleasure and fame. And here my 
good brother was at his best. It was ' ' Paul ' ' here and ' ' Paul ' ' 
there. Already known for several songs of great fame, as well 
as for his stage work and genial personality, he was wel- 
comed everywhere. 

And then, ambling down the street in the comforting shade 
of its west wall, what amazing personalities, male and female, 
and so very many of them, pausing to take him by the hand, 
slap him on the back, pluck familiarly at his coat lapel and 
pour into his ear or his capacious bosom magnificent tales of 
successes, of great shows, of fights and deaths and love affairs 
and tricks and scandals. And all the time my good brother 
smiled, laughed, sympathized. There were moments with 
prizefighters, with long-haired Thespians down on their luck 
and looking for a dime or a dollar, and bright petty upstarts 
of the vaudeville world. Retired miners and ranchmen out 
of the West, here to live and recount their tales of hardships 
endured, battles won, or of marvelous winnings at cards, trick- 
eries in racing, prizefighting and what not, now ambled by or 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 447 

stopped and exchanged news or stories. There was talk of 
what ' ' dogs ' ' or " swine ' ' some people were, what liars, scoun- 
drels, ingrates; as well as the magnificent, magnanimous, 
"God's own salt" that others were. The oaths! The stories 
of women! My brother seemed to know them all. I was 
amazed. "What a genial, happy, well-thought-of successful 
man! 



CHAPTER LXVIII 

All this while of course there had been much talk as to the 
character of those we met, the wealth and fashion that pur- 
chased at Tiffany's or at Brentano's, those who loafed at 
the Fifth Avenue, the Hoffman House, the Gilsey, the Nor- 
mandie. My brother had friends in many of these hotels and 
bars. A friend of his was the editor of the Standard, Roland 
Burke Hennessy, and he would take me up and introduce me. 
Another was the political or sporting man of the Sun or 
World or Herald. Here came one who was the manager of the 
Casino or the Gilsey ! One was a writer, a playwright, a song- 
writer or a poet! A man of facile friendships, my brother! 
As we passed Twenty-third Street he made it plain that here 
was a street which had recently begun to replace the older 
and more colossal Sixth Avenue, some of the newer and much 
smarter stores — Best's, Le Boutillier 's, McCreery's, Stern 
Brothers' — having built here. 

' ' This is really the smart street now, Thee, this and a part 
of Fifth Avenue about Twenty-third. The really exclusive 
stores are coming in here. If you ever work in New York, as 
you will, you'll want to know about these things. You'll see 
more smart women in here than in any other shopping street," 
and he called my attention to the lines of lacquered and be- 
furred and beplushed carriages, the harness of the horses 
aglitter with nickel and gilt. 

Passing Daly 's he said : ' ' Now here, my boy, is a manager. 
He makes actors, he don't hire them. He takes 'em and trains 
'em. All these young fellows and girls who are making a 
stir, ' ' and he named a dozen, among whom I noted such names 
as those of Maude Adams, Willie Collier, Drew and Faver- 
sham, "worked for him. And he don't allow any nonsense. 
There's none of that upstage stuff with him, you bet. When 
you work for him you're just an ordinary employee and you 

448 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 449 

do what lie tells you, not the way you think you ought to do. 
I've watched him rehearse, and I know, and all these fellows 
tell the same story about him. But he 's a gentleman, my boy, 
and a manager. Everybody knows that when he finishes with 
a man or a woman they can act. ' ' 

At Thirty-third Street he waved his hand in the direction 
of the Waldorf, which was then but the half of its later size. 

"Down there's the "Waldorf. That's the place. That's 
the last word for the rich. That 's where they give the biggest 
balls and dinners, there and at Delmonico's and the Nether- 
land. ' ' And after a pause he continued : ' ' Some time you 
ought to write about these things, Thee. They're the limit 
for extravagance and show. The people out West don't know 
yet what's going on, but the rich are getting control. They'll 
own the country pretty soon. A writer like you could make 
'em see that. You ought to show up some of these things so 
they'd know." 

Youthful, inexperienced, unlettered, the whole scroll of 
this earthly wallow a mere guess, I accepted that as an im- 
portant challenge. Maybe it ought to be shown up. . . . 
As though picturing or indicating life has ever yet changed 
it! But he, the genial and hopeful, always fancied that it 
might be so — and I with him. 

When he left me this day at three or four, his interest ended 
because the wonders of Broadway had been exhausted, I 
found myself with all the great strange city still to be ex- 
plored. Making inquiry as to directions and distances, I soon 
found myself in Fifth Avenue at Forty-second Street. Here, 
represented by mansions at least, was that agglomeration of 
wealth which, as I then imagined, solved all earthly ills. 
Beauty was here, of course, and ease and dignity and security, 
that most wonderful and elusive thing in life. I saw, I ad- 
mired, and I resented, being myself poor and seeking. 

Fifth Avenue then lacked a few of the buildings which 
since have added somewhat to its impressiveness — the Public 
Library, the Metropolitan Museum facade at Eighty-second 
Street, as well as most of the great houses which now face 
Central Park north of Fifty-ninth Street. But in their place 



450 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

was something that has since been lost and never will be again : 
a line of quiet and unpretentious brownstone residences which, 
crowded together on spaces of land no wider than twenty-five 
feet, still had about them an air of exclusiveness which caused 
one to hesitate and take note. Between Forty-second and 
Fifty-ninth Street there was scarcely a suggestion of that 
coming invasion of trade which subsequently, in a period of 
less than twenty years, changed its character completely. In- 
stead there were clubs, residences, huge quiet and graceful 
hotels such as the old Plaza and the Windsor, long since de- 
stroyed, and the very graceful Cathedral of St. Patrick. All 
the cross streets in this area were lined uniformly with brown- 
stone or red brick houses of the same height and general ap- 
pearance, a high flight of steps leading to the front door, a 
side gate and door for servants under the steps. Nearly all 
of these houses were closely boarded up for the summer. 
There was scarcely a trace of life anywhere save here or there 
where a servant lounged idly at a side gate or on the front 
steps talking to a policeman or a cabman. 

At Fiftieth Street the great church on its platform was as 
empty as a drum. At Fifty-ninth, where stood the Savoy, 
the Plaza, and the Netherland, as well as the great home of 
Cornelius Vanderbilt, it was all bare as a desert. Lonely 
handsome cabs plupped dismally to and fro, and the father or 
mother of the present Fifth Avenue' bus, an overgrown closed 
carriage, rolled lonesomely between Washington Square and 
One Hundred and Tenth Street. Central Park had most of 
the lovely walks and lakes which grace it today, but no distant 
skyline. Central Park West as such had not even appeared. 
That huge wall that breaks the western sky now was wanting. 
Along this dismal thoroughfare there trundled a dismal yellow 
horse-car trailing up a cobble-paved street bare of anything 
save a hotel or two and some squatter shanties on rocks, with 
their attendant goats. 

But for all that, keeping on as far north as the Museum, I 
was steadily more and more impressed. It was not beautiful, 
but perhaps, as I thought, it did not need to be. The con- 
gestion of the great city and the power of a number of great 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 451 

names were sufficient to excuse it. And ever and anon would 
come a something — the Gould home at Sixty-first, the Have- 
meyer and Astor residences at Sixty-sixth and Sixty-eighth, 
the Lenox Library at Seventy-second — which redeemed it. 
Even the old red brick and white stone Museum, now but the 
central core of the much larger building, with its attendant 
obelisk, had charm and dignity. So far I wandered, then 
took the bus and returned to my sister's apartment in Fif- 
teenth Street. 

If I have presented all this mildly it was by no means a mild 
experience for me. Sensitive to the brevity of life and what 
one may do in a given span, vastly interested in the city itself, 
I was swiftly being hypnotized by a charm more elusive than 
real, more of the mind than the eye perhaps, which seized upon 
and held me so tensely nevertheless that soon I was quite un- 
able to judge sanely of all this and saw its commonplace and 
even mean face in a most roseate light. The beauty, the hope, 
the possibilities that were here ! It was not a handsome city. 
As I look back on it now, there was much that was gross and 
soggy and even repulsive about it. It had too many hard 
and treeless avenues and cross streets, bare of anything save 
stone walls and stone or cobble pavements and wretched iron 
lamp-posts. There were regions that were painfully crowded 
with poverty, dirt, despair. The buildings were too uniformly 
low, compact, squeezed. Outside the exclusive residence and 
commercial areas there was no sense of length or space. 

But having seen Broadway and this barren section of Fifth 
Avenue, I could not think of it in a hostile way, the magnetism 
of large bodies over small ones holding me. Its barrenness 
did not now appall me, nor its lack of beauty irritate. There 
was something else here, a quality of life and zest and security 
and ease for some, cheek by jowl with poverty and longing and 
sacrifice, which gives to life everywhere its keenest most 
pathetic edge. Here was none of that eager clattering snap 
so characteristic of many of our Western cities, which, while 
it arrests at first, eventually palls. No city that I had ever 
seen had exactly what this had. As a boy, of course, I had 



452 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

invested Chicago with immense color and force, and it was 
there, ignorant, American, semi-conscious, seeking, inspiring. 
But New York was entirely different. It had the feeling of 
gross and blissful and parading self-indulgence. It was as 
if self-indulgence whispered to you that here was its 
true home ; as if, for the most part, it was here secure. Life 
here was harder perhaps, for some more aware, more cynical 
and ruthless and brazen and shameless, and yet more alluring 
for these very reasons. "Wherever one turned one felt a 
consciousness of ease and gluttony, indifference to ideals, how- 
ever low or high, and coupled with a sense of power that 
had found itself and was not easily to be dislodged, of virtue 
that has little idealism and is willing to yield for a price. 
Here, as one could feel, were huge dreams and lusts and 
vanities being gratified hourly. I wanted to know the worst 
and the best of it. 

During the few days that I was permitted to remain here, 
I certainly had an excellent sip. My brother, while associated 
with the other two as a partner, was so small a factor so far 
as his firm 's internal economy was concerned that he was not 
needed as more than a hand-shaker on Broadway, one who 
went about among vaudeville and stage singers and actors and 
song-composers and advertised by his agreeable personality 
the existence of his firm and its value to them. And it was 
that quality of geniality in him which so speedily caused his 
firm to grow and prosper. Indeed he was its very breath and 
life. I always think of him as idling along Broadway in the 
summer time, seeing men and women who could sing songs 
and writers who could write them, and inducing them by the 
compelling charm of his personality, to resort to his firm. He 
had a way with people, affectionate, reassuring, intimate. He 
was a magnet which drew the young and the old, the sophisti- 
cated and the unsophisticated, to his house. Gradually, and 
because of him and his fame, it prospered mightily, and yet I 
doubt if ever his partners understood how much he meant to 
them. His house was young and unimportant, yet within a 
year or two it had forged its way to the front, and this was due 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 453 

to him and none other. The rest was merely fair commercial 
management of what he provided in great abundance. 

While he waited for his regular theatrical season to resume, 
he was most excellently prepared to entertain one who might 
be interested to see Broadway. This night, after dinner at 
my sister's, he said, "Come on, sport," and together, after 
promising faithfully to be back by midnight, we ambled forth, 
strolling across Fifteenth Street to Sixth Avenue and then 
taking a car to Thirty-third Street, the real center of all things 
theatrical at the time. Here, at Broadway and Thirty-fifth, 
opposite the Herald building and the Herald Square Theater, 
stood the Hotel Aulic, a popular rendezvous for actors and 
singers, with whom my brother was most concerned. And 
here they were in great number, the sidewalks on two sides 
of the building alive with them, a world of glittering, spinning 
flies. I recall the agreeable summer evening air, the bright 
comforting lights, the open doors and windows, the showy 
clothes, the laughter, the jesting, the expectorating, the back- 
slapping geniality. It was wonderful, the spirit and the sense 
of happiness and ease. Men do at times attain to happiness, 
paradise even, in this shabby, noisome, worthless, evanescent, 
make-believe world. I have seen it with mine own eyes. 

And here, as in that more pretentious institution at Forty- 
second Street, the Metropole, my brother was at ease. His 
was by no means the trade way of a drummer but rather that 
of one who, like these others, was merely up and down the 
street seeing what he might. He drank, told idle tales, jested 
unwearyingly. But all the while, as he told me later, he was 
really looking for certain individuals who could sing or play 
and whom in this roundabout and casual way he might interest 
in the particular song or instrumental composition he was then 
furthering. ' ' And you never can tell, ' ' he said. ' ' You might 
run into some fellow who would be just the one to write a 
song or sing one for you." 



CHAPTER LXIX 

The next day I was left to myself, and visited City Hall, 
Brooklyn Bridge, Wall Street and the financial and commercial 
sections. 

I, having no skill for making money and intensely hungry 
for the things that money would buy, stared at Wall Street, 
a kind of cloudy Olympus in which foregathered all the gods 
of finance, with the eyes of one who hopes to extract something 
by mere observation. Physically it was not then, as it is 
today, the center of a sky-crowded world. There were few 
if any high buildings below City Hall, few higher than ten 
stories. Wall Street was curved, low-fronted, like Oxford 
Street in London. It began, as some one had already pointed 
out, at a graveyard and ended at a river. The house of J. P. 
Morgan was just then being assailed for its connection with 
a government gold bond issue. The offices of Eussell Sage and 
George Gould (the son), as well as those of the Standard Oil 
Company below Wall in Broadway, and those of a whole 
company of now forgotten magnates, could have been pointed 
out by any messenger boy, postman or policeman. What im- 
pressed me was that the street was vibrant with something 
which, though far from pleasing, craft, greed, cunning, nig- 
gardliness, ruthlessness, a smart swaggering ease on the part 
of some, and hopeless, bedraggled or beaten aspect on the 
part of others, held my interest as might a tiger or a snake. 
I had never seen such a world. It was so busy and paper- 
bestrewn, messenger and broker bestridden, as to make one 
who had nothing to do there feel dull and commonplace. One 
thought only of millions made in stocks over night, of yachts, 
orgies, travels, fames and what not else. Since that time Wall 
Street has become much tamer, less significant, but then one 
had a feeling that if only one had a tip or a little skill one 
might become rich; or that, on the other hand, one might be 
torn to bits and that here was no mercy. 

454 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 455 

I arrived a little before noon, and the ways were alive 
with messenger boys and young clerks and assistants. On 
the ground was a mess of papers, torn telegrams and letters. 
Near Broad and Wall streets the air was filled with a hum 
of voices and typewriter clicks issuing from open windows. 
Just then, as with the theatrical business later, and still later 
with the motion picture industry, it had come to be important 
to be in the street, however thin one 's connection. To say ' ' J 
am in Wall Street" suggested a world of prospects and possi- 
bilities. The fact that at this time, and for twenty years after, 
the news columns were all but closed to suicides and failures 
in Wall Street, so common were they, illustrates how vagrant 
and unfounded were the dreams of many. 

But the end of Wall Street as the seat of American money 
domination might even then have been foretold. The cities of 
the nation were growing. New and by degrees more or less 
independent centers of finance were being developed. In the 
course of fifteen years it had become the boast of some cities 
that they could do without New York in the matter of loans, 
and it was true. They could ; and today many enterprises go 
west, not east, for their cash. In the main, Wall Street has 
degenerated into a second-rate gamblers' paradise. What 
significant Wall Street figures are there today ? 

On one of my morning walks in New York I had wandered 
up Broadway to the Herald Building and looked into its 
windows, where were visible a number of great presses in full 
operation, much larger than any I had seen in the West, and 
my brother had recalled to me the fact that James Gordon 
Bennett, owner and editor of the Herald, had once commis- 
sioned Henry M. Stanley, at that time a reporter on the paper, 
to go to Africa to find Livingstone. And my good brother, 
who romanticized all things, my supposed abilities and possi- 
bilities included, was inclined to think that if I came to New 
York some such great thing might happen to me. 

On another day I went to Printing House Square, where I 
stared at the Sun and World, and Times and Tribune build- 
ings, all facing City Hall Park, sighing for the opportunities 
that they represented. But I did not act. Something about 



456 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

them overawed me, especially the World, the editor of which 
had begun his career in St. Louis years before. Compared 
with the Western papers with which I had been connected, 
all New York papers seemed huge, the tasks they represented 
editorially and reportorially much more difficult. True, a 
brother of a famous playwright with whom I had worked in 
St. Louis had come East and connected himself with the 
World, and I might have called upon him and spied out the 
land. He had fortified himself with a most favorable record in 
the "West, as had I, only I did not look upon mine as so favor- 
able somehow. Again, a city editor once of St. Louis was now 
here, city editor of one of the city's great papers, the Recorder, 
and another man, a Sunday editor of Pittsburgh, had become 
the Sunday editor of the Press here. But these appeared to 
me to be exceptional cases. I reconnoitered these large and in 
the main rather dull institutions with the eye of one who seeks 
to take a fortress. The editorial pages of all of these papers, 
as I had noticed in the West, bristled with cynical and con- 
descending remarks about that region, and their voices rep- 
resenting great circulation and wealth gave them amazing 
weight in my eyes. Although I knew what I knew about the 
subservience of newspapers to financial interests, their "rat- 
like fear of religionists and moralists, their shameful betrayal 
of the ordinary man at every point at which he could possibly 
be betrayed yet still having the power, by weight of lies and 
pretense and make-believe, to stir him up to his own detri- 
ment and destruction, I was frightened by this very power, 
which in subsequent years I have come to look upon as the 
most deadly and forceful of all in nature : the power to mas- 
querade and betray. , 

There was about these papers an air of assurance and right- 
eousness and authority and superiority which overawed, and 
frightened me. To work on the Sun, the Herald, the World! 
How many cubs, from how many angles of our national life, 
were constantly and hopefully eying them from the very 
same sidewalks or benches in City Hall Park, as the ultimate 
solution of all their literary, commercial, social, political prob- 
lems and ambitions. The thousands of pipe-smoking collegians 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 457 

who have essayed the Sun alone, the scullion Danas, embryo 
Greeleys and Bennetts ! 

I decided that it would be best for me to return to Pitts- 
burgh and save a little money before I took one of these 
frowning editorial offices by storm, and I did return, but in 
what a reduced mood ! Pittsburgh, after New York and all I 
had seen there ! And in this darkly brooding and indifferent 
spirit I now resumed my work. A sum of money sufficient to 
sustain me for a period in New York was all that I wished 
now. 

And in the course of the next four months I did save two 
hundred and forty dollars, enduring deprivations which I 
marvel at even now — breakfast consisting of a cruller and a 
cup of coffee ; dinners that cost no more than a quarter, some- 
times no more than fifteen qents. In the meantime I worked 
as before only to greater advantage, because I was now more 
sure of myself. My study of Balzac and these recent adven- 
tures in the great city had so fired my ambition that nothing 
could have kept me in Pittsburgh. I lived on so little that I 
think I must have done myself some physical harm which 
told against me later in the struggle for existence in New 
York. 

At this time I had the fortune to discover Huxley and Tyn- 
dall and Herbert Spencer, whose introductory volume to his 
Synthetic Philosophy (First Principles) quite blew me, in- 
tellectually, to bits. Hitherto, until I had read Huxley, I 
had some lingering filaments of Catholicism trailing about me, 
faith in the existence of Christ, the soundness of his moral 
and sociologic deductions, the brotherhood of man. But on 
reading Science and Hebrew Tradition and Science and Chris- 
tian Tradition, and finding both the Old and New Testaments 
to be not compendiums of revealed truth but mere records of 
religious experiences, and very erroneous ones at that, and 
then taking up First Principles and discovering that all I 
deemed substantial — man's place in nature, his importance in 
the universe, this too, too solid earth, man 's very identity save 
as an infinitesimal speck of energy or a ''suspended equation" 
drawn or blown here and there by larger forces in which he 



458 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

moved quite unconsciously as an atom — all questioned and 
dissolved into other and less understandable things, I was com- 
pletely thrown down in my conceptions or non-conceptions 
of life. 

Up to this time there had been in me a blazing and un- 
checked desire to get on and the feeling that in doing so we 
did get somewhere ; now in its place was the definite conviction 
that spiritually one got nowhere, that there was no hereafter, 
that one lived and had his being because one had to, and 
that it was of no importance. Of one 's ideals, struggles, dep- 
rivations, sorrows and joys, it could only be said that they 
were chemic compulsions, something which for some inexpli- 
cable but unimportant reason responded to and resulted from 
the hope of pleasure and the fear of pain. jMan was a mech- 
anism, undevised and uncreated, and a badly and carelessly 
driven one at that^ 

I fear that I cannot make you feel how these things came 
upon me in the course of a few weeks' reading and left me 
numb, my gravest fears as to the unsolvable disorder and 
brutality of life eternally verified. I felt as low and hopeless 
at times as a beggar of the streets. There was of course this 
other matter of necessity, internal chemical compulsion, to 
which I had to respond whether I would or no. I was daily 
facing a round of duties which now more than ever verified 
all that I had suspected and that these books proved. With 
a gloomy eye I began to watch how the chemical — and their 
children, the mechanical — forces operated through man and 
outside him, and this under my very eyes. Suicides seemed 
sadder since there was no care for them; failures the same. 
One of those periodic scandals breaking out in connection with 
the care of prisoners in some local or state jail, I saw how 
self-interest, the hope of pleasure or the fear of pain caused 
jailers or wardens or a sheriff to graft on prisoners, feed them 
rotten meat, torture them into silence and submission, and 
then, politics interfering (the hope of pleasure again and the 
fear of pain on the part of some) , the whole thing hushed up, 
no least measure of the sickening truth breaking out in the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 459 

subservient papers. Life could or would do nothing for those 
whom it so shamefully abused. 

Again, there was a poor section, one street in the East Pitts- 
burgh district, shut off by a railroad at one end (the latter 
erecting a high fence to protect itself from trespass) and by 
an arrogant property owner at the other end; those within 
were actually left without means of ingress and egress. Yet 
instead of denouncing either or both, the railroads being so 
powerful and the citizen prosperous and within his " rights," 
I was told to write a humorous article but not to "hurt any- 
body's feelings." Also before my eyes were always those 
regions of indescribable poverty and indescribable wealth 
previously mentioned, which were always carefully kept sepa- 
rate by the local papers, all the favors and compliments and 
commercial and social aids going to those who had, all the 
sniffs and indifferences and slights going to those who had not ; 
and when I read Spencer I could only sigh. All I could think 
of was that since nature would not or could not do anything 
for man, he must, if he could, do something for himself; and 
of this I saw no prospect, he being a product of these self- 
same accidental, indifferent and bitterly cruel forces. 

And so I went on from day to day, reading, thinking, doing 
fairly acceptable work, but always withdrawing more and 
more into myself. As I saw it then, the world could not un- 
derstand me, nor I it, nor men each other very well. Then 
a little later I turned and said that since the whole thing was 
hopeless I might as well forget it and join the narrow, heart- 
less, indifferent scramble, but I could not do that either, lack- 
ing the temperament and the skill. All I could do was think, 
and since no paper such as I knew was interested in any of 
the things about which I was thinking, I was hopeless indeed. 
Finally, in late November, having two hundred and forty dol- 
lars saved, I decided to leave this dismal scene and seek the 
charm of the great city beyond, hoping that there I might suc- 
ceed at something, be eased and rested by some important 
work of some kind. 



CHAPTER LXX 

My departure was accelerated by a conversation I had one 
day with the political reporter of whom I have spoken but 
whose name I have forgotten. By now I had come to be on 
agreeable social terms with all the men on our staff, and at 
midnight it was my custom to drift around to the Press Club, 
where might be found a goodly company of men who worked 
on the different papers. I found this political man here one 
night. He said : "I can't understand why you stay here. Now 
I wouldn 't say that to any one else in the game for fear he 'd 
think I was plotting to get him out of his job, but with you 
it's different. There's no great chance here, and you have 
too much ability to waste your time on this town. They won't 
let you do anything. The steel people have this town sewed 
up tight. The papers are muzzled. All you can do is to 
write what the people at the top want you to write, and that's 
very little. With your talent you could go down to New York 
and make a place for yourself. I've been there myself, but 
had to come back on account of my family. The conditions 
were too uncertain for me, and I have to have a regular in- 
come. But with you it's different. You're young, and ap- 
parently you haven't any one dependent on you. If you do 
strike it down there you'll make a lot of money, and what's 
more you might make a name for yourself. Don't you think 
it 's foolish for you to stay here ? Don 't think it 's anything to 
me whether you go or stay. I haven 't any ax to grind, but I 
really wonder why you stay." 

I explained that I had been drifting, that I was really on 
my way to New York but taking my time about it. Only a 
few days before I had been reading of a certain Indo-English 
newspaper man, fresh out of India with his books and short 
stories, who was making a great stir. His name was Rudyard 
Kipling, and the enthusiasm with which he was being received 

460 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 461 

made me not jealous but wishful for a career for myself. The 
tributes to his brilliance were so unanimous, and he was a 
mere youth as yet, not more than twenty-seven or -eight. He 
was coming to America, or was even then on his way, and 
the wonder of such a success filled my mind. I decided then 
and there that I would go, must go, and accordingly gave 
notice of my intention. My city editor merely looked at me 
as much as to say, "Well, I thought so," then said: "Well, 
I think you'll do better there myself, but I'm not glad to have 
you go. You can refer to us any time you want to. ' ' 

On Saturday I drew my pay at noon and by four o'clock 
had once more boarded the express which deposited me in New 
York the following morning at seven. My brother had long 
since left New York and would not be back until the following 
Spring. I had exchanged a word or two with my sister and 
found that she was not prospering. Since Paul had left she 

had been forced to resort to letting rooms, H not having 

found anything to do. I wired her that I was coming, and 
walked in on her the next morning. 

My sister, on seeing me again, was delighted. I did not 
know then, and perhaps if I had I should not have been so 
pleased, that I was looked upon by her as the possible way out 
of a very difficult and trying crisis which she and her two 

children were then facing. For H , from being a one-time 

fairly resourceful and successful and aggressive man, had 
slipped into a most disconcerting attitude of weakness and 
all but indifference before the onslaughts of the great city. 

My brother Paul, being away, saw no reason why he should 

be called upon to help them, since H was as physically 

able as himself. Aside from renting their rooms there was 
apparently no other source of income here, at least none 

which H troubled to provide. He appeared to be done 

for, played out. Like so many who have fought a fair battle 
and then lost, he had wearied of the game and was drifting. 
And my sister, like so many of the children of ordinary 
families the world over, had received no practical education 
or training and knew nothing other than housework, that 
profitless trade. In consequence, within a very short time 



462 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

after my arrival, I found myself faced by one of two alterna- 
tives: that of retiring and leaving her to shift as best she 
might (a step which, in view of what followed, would have 
been wiser but which my unreasoning sympathy would not 
permit me to do), or of assisting her with what means I had. 
But this would be merely postponing the day of reckoning for 
all of them and bringing a great deal of trouble upon myself. 
For, finding me willing to pay for my room and board here, 
and in addition to advance certain sums which had nothing 

to do with my obligations, H felt that he could now drift 

a little while longer and so did, accepting through his wife 
such doles as I was willing to make. My sister, fumbling, im- 
practical soul, flowing like water into any crevice of oppor- 
tunity, accepted this sacrifice on my part. 

But despite these facts, which developed very slowly, I 
was very much alive to the possibilities which the city then 
held for me. At last I was here. I told myself I had a com- 
fortable place to stay and would remain, and from this vantage 
point I could now sally forth and reconnoiter the city at my 
leisure. And as in all previous instances, I devoted a day or 
two to rambling about, surveying the world which I was seek- 
ing to manipulate to my advantage, and then on the second or 
third afternoon began to investigate those newspaper offices 
with which I was most anxious to connect. 

I can never forget the shock I received when on entering 
first the World, then the Sun, and later the Herald, I dis- 
covered that one could not so much as get in to see the city 
editor, that worthy being guarded by lobby or anteroom, in 
which were posted as lookouts and buffers or men-at-arms as 
cynical and contemptuous a company of youths and hall boys 
as it has ever been my lot to meet. They were not only self- 
sufficient, but supercilious, scoffing and ribald. Whenever I 
entered one of these offices there were two or three on guard, 
sometimes four or five in the World office, wrestling for the 
possession of an ink-well or a pencil or an apple, or slapping 
each other on the back. But let a visitor arrive with an 
inquiry of some kind, and these young banditti would cease 
their personal brawling long enough at least to place them- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 463 

selves as a barricade between the newcomer and the door to 
the editorial sanctum, whereupon would ensue the following 
routine formula, each and every one of them chewing gum or 
eating an apple. 

"Whoja wanta see?" 

"The city editor." 

"Wha'ja wanta see him about?" 

"A job." 

"No vacancies. No; no vacancies today. He says to say 
no vacancies today, see ? You can 't go in there. He says no 
vacancies. ' ' 

"But can't I even see him?" 

' ' No ; he don 't wanta see anybody. No vacancies. ' ' 

"Well, how about taking my name in to him?" 

"Not if you're lookin' for a job. He says no vacancies." 

The tone and the manner were most disconcerting. To me, 
new to the city and rather overawed by the size of the build- 
ings as well as the reputation of the editors and the publica- 
tions themselves, this was all but final. For a little while after 
each rebuff I did not quite see how I was to overcome this 
difficulty. Plainly they were overrun with applicants, and in 
so great a city why would they not be? But what was I to 
do? One must get in or write or call up on the telephone, 
but would any city editor worthy the name discuss a man's 
fitness or attempt to judge him by a telephone conversation or 
a letter? 

Rather dourly and speculatively, therefore, after I had 
visited four or five of these offices with exactly the same result 
in each instance, I went finally to City Hall Park, which 
fronted the majority of them — the Sun, the Tribune, the 
Times, the World, the Press — and stared at their great build- 
ings. About me was swirling the throng which has always 
made that region so interesting, the vast mass that bubbles 
upward from the financial district and the regions south of 
it and crosses the plaza to Brooklyn Bridge and the elevated 
roads (the subways had not come yet). About me on the 
benches of the park was, even in this gray, chill December 
weather, that large company of bums, loafers, tramps, idlers, 



464 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the flotsam and jetsam of the great city's whirl and strife to 
be seen there today. I presume I looked at them and then 
considered myself and these great offices, and it was then that 
the idea of Hurstwood was born. The city seemed so huge 
and cruel. I recalled gay Broadway of the preceding summer, 
and the baking, isolated, exclusive atmosphere of Fifth Ave- 
nue, all boarded up. And now I was here and it was winter, 
with this great newspaper world to be conquered, and I did 
not see how it was to be done. At four in the afternoon I 
dubiously turned my steps northward along the great, bus- 
tling, solidly commercial Broadway to Fifteenth Street, walk- 
ing all the way and staring into the shops. Those who recall 
Sister Carrie's wanderings may find a taste of it here. In 
Union Square, before Tiffany 's, I stared at an immense Christ- 
mas throng. Then in the darkness I wandered across to my 
sister's apartment, and in the warmth and light there set me 
down thinking what to do. My sister noticed my mood and 
after a little while said: 

' ' You 're worrying, aren 't you ? ' ' 

' ' Oh no, I 'm not, ' ' I said rather pretentiously. 

"Oh yes, you are too. You're wondering how you're going 
to get along. I know how you are. "We 're all that way. But 
you mustn't worry. Paul says you can write wonderfully. 
You've only been here a day or two. You must wait until 
you've tried a little while and then see. You're sure to get 
along. New York isn't so bad, only you have to get started." 

I decided that this was true enough and proposed to give 
myself time to think. 



CHAPTER LXXI 

But the next day, and the next, and the next brought me 
no solution to the problem. The weather had turned cold and 
for a time there was a slushy snow on the ground, which made 
the matter of job-hunting all the worse. Those fierce youths 
in the anterooms were no more kindly on the second and fifth 
days than they had been on the first. But by now, in addition 
to becoming decidedly dour, I was becoming a little angry. It 
seemed to me to be the height of discourtesy, not to say rank 
brutality, for newspapers, and especially those which boasted 
a social and humanitarian leadership of their fellows in Amer- 
ican life, to place such unsophisticated and blatant and ill- 
trained upstarts between themselves and the general public, 
men and women of all shades and degrees of intelligence who 
might have to come in contact with them. H. L. Mencken has 
written : ' ' The average American newspaper^ especially the 
so-called better sort, has the intelligence of a Baptist evan- 
gelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist 
boob-bumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the 
taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a 
police-station lawyer." Judging by some of my experiences 
and observations, I would be willing to subscribe to this. 
The unwarranted and unnecessary airs! The grand assump- 
tion of wisdom! The heartless and brutal nature of their 
internal economies, their pandering to the cheapest of all 
public instincts and tendencies in search of circulation ! 

After several days I made up my mind to see the city editor 
of these papers, regardless of hall boys. And so, going one 
day at one o 'clock to the World, I started to walk right in, but, 
being intercepted as usual, lost my courage and retreated. 
However, as I have since thought, perhaps this was fortunate, 
for going downstairs I meditated most grievously as to my 
failure, my lack of skill and courage in carrying out my in- 

465 



466 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

tention. So thoroughly did I castigate myself that I recovered 
my nerve and returned. I reentered the small office, and find- 
ing two of the youths still on hand and waiting to intercept 
me, brushed them both aside as one might flies, opened the 
much-guarded door and walked in. 

To my satisfaction, while they followed me and by threats 
and force attempted to persuade me to retreat, I gazed upon 
one of the most interesting city reportorial and editorial rooms 
that I have ever beheld. It was forty or fifty feet wide by a 
hundred or more deep, and lighted, even by day in this gray 
weather, by a blaze of lights. The entire space from front to 
back was filled with desks. A varied company of newspaper 
men, most of them in shirt-sleeves, were hard at work. In the 
forward part of the room, near the door by which I had en- 
tered, and upon a platform, were several desks, at which three 
or four men were seated — the throne, as I quickly learned, of 
the city editor and his assistants. Two of these, as I could 
see, were engaged in reading and marking papers. A third, 
who looked as though he might be the city editor, was consult- 
ing with several men at his desk. Copy boys were ambling to 
and fro. From somewhere came the constant click-click-click 
of telegraph instruments and the howl of ' ' Coppee ! " I think 
I should have been forced to retire had it not been for the 
fact that as I was standing there, threatened and pleaded with 
by my two adversaries, a young man (since distinguished in 
the journalistic world, Arthur Brisbane) who was passing 
through the room looked at me curiously and inquired cour- 
teously : 

"What is it you want?" 

' ' I want, ' ' I said, half-angered by the spectacle I was mak- 
ing and that was being made of me, "a job." 

"Where do you come from?" 

"The West." 

' ' Wait a moment, ' ' he said, and the youths, seeing that I had 
attracted his attention, immediately withdrew. He went 
toward the man at the desk whom I had singled out as the 
city editor, and turned and pointed to me. ' ' This young man 
wants a job. I wish you would give him one," 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 467 

The man nodded, and my remarkable interrogator, turning 
to me, said, "Just wait here," and disappeared. 

I did not know quite what to think, so astonished was I, 
but with each succeeding moment my spirits rose, and by the 
time the city editor chose to motion me to him I was in a very 
exalted state indeed. So much for courage, I told myself. 
Surely I was fortunate, for had I not been dreaming for 
months — years — of coming to New York and after great de- 
privation and difficulty perhaps securing a position? And 
now of a sudden here I was thus swiftly vaulted into the very 
position which of all others I had most craved. Surely this 
must be the influence of a star of fortune. Surely now if I 
had the least trace of ability, I should be in a better position 
than I had ever been in before. I looked about the great 
room, as I waited patiently and delightedly, and saw pasted 
on the walls at intervals printed cards which read : Accuracy, 
Accuracy, Accuracy! Who? What? Where f When? 
How? The Facts — The Color — The Facts! I knew what those 
signs meant: the proper order for beginning a newspaper 
story. Another sign insisted upon Promptness, Courtesy, 
Geniality! Most excellent traits, I thought, but not as easy 
to put into execution as comfortable publishers and managing 
editors might suppose. 

Presently I was called over and told to take a seat, after 
being told : " I '11 have an assignment for you after a while. ' ' 
That statement meant work, an opportunity, a salary. I felt 
myself growing apace, only the eye and the glance of my 
immediate superior was by no means cheering or genial. 
This man was holding a difficult position, one of the most 
difficult in newspaperdom in America at the time, and under 
one of the most eccentric and difficult of publishers, Joseph 
Pulitzer. 

This same Pulitzer, whom Alleyne Ireland subsequently 
characterized in so brilliant a fashion as to make this brief 
sketch trivial and unimportant save for its service here as 
a link in this tale, was a brilliant and eccentric Magyar Jew, 
long since famous for his journalistic genius. At that time 
he must have been between fifty-five and sixty years of age, 



468 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

semi-dyspeptic and half -blind, having almost wrecked himself 
physically, or so I understood, in a long and grueling struggle 
to ascend to preeminence in the American newspaper world. 
He was the chief owner, as I understood, of not only the New 
York World but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the then after- 
noon paper of largest circulation and influence in that city. 
While I was in St. Louis the air of that newspaper world was 
surcharged or still rife with this remarkable publisher's past 
exploits — how once, when he was starting in the newspaper 
world as a publisher, he had been horsewhipped by some irate 
citizen for having published some derogatory item, and, hav- 
ing tamely submitted to the castigation, had then rushed into 
his sanctum and given orders that an extra should be issued 
detailing the attack in order that the news value might not be 
lost to the counting-room. Similarly, one of his St. Louis city 
or managing editors (one Colonel Cockerill by name, who at 
this very time or a very little later was still one of the manag- 
ing editors of the New York World) had, after conducting 
some campaign of exposure against a local citizen by order of 
his chief, and being confronted in his office by the same, evi- 
dently come to punish him, drawn a revolver and killed him. 
That was a part of what might have been called the makings 
of this great newspaper figure. Here in New York, after his 
arrival on the scene in 1884, at which time he had taken 
over a moribund journal called the World, he had literally 
succeeded in turning things upside down, much as did Wil- 
liam Eandolph Heart after him, and as had Charles A. Dana 
and others before him. Like all aggressive newspaper men 
worthy the name, he had seized upon every possible vital issue 
and attacked, attacked, attacked — Tammany Hall, Wall Street 
(then defended by the Sun and the Herald), the house of 
Morgan, some phases of society, and many other features and 
conditions of the great city. For one thing, he had cut the 
price of his paper to one cent, a move which was reported to 
have infuriated his conservative and quiescent rivals, who 
were getting two, three and five and who did not wish to be 
disturbed in their peaceful pursuits. The Sun in particular, 
which had been made by the brilliant and daring eccentricity 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 469 

of Dana and his earlier radicalism, and the Herald, which 
originally owed its growth and fame to the monopoly-fighting 
skill of Bennett, were now both grown conservative and mutu- 
ally attacked him as low, vulgar, indecent and the like, an 
upstart Jew whose nose was in every putrescent dunghill, 
ratting out filth for the consumption of the dregs of society. 
But is it not always so when any one arises who wishes to 
break through from submersion or nothingness into the white 
light of power and influence? Do not the resultant quakes 
always infuriate those who have ceased growing or are at least 
comfortably quiescent and who do not wish to be disturbed? 

Just the same, this man, because of his vital, aggressive, 
restless, working mood, and his vaulting ambition to be all 
that there was to be of journalistic force in America, was 
making a veritable hell of his paper and the lives of those 
who worked for him. And although he himself was not pres- 
ent at the time but was sailing around the world on a yacht, 
or living in a villa on the Eiviera, or at Bar Harbor, or in 
his town house in New York or London, you could feel the 
feverish and disturbing and distressing ionic tang of his pres- 
ence in this room as definitely as though he were there in the 
flesh. Air fairly sizzled with the ionic rays of this black 
star. Of secretaries to this editor-publisher and traveling 
with him at the time but coming back betimes to nose about 
the paper and cause woe to others, there were five. Of sons, 
by no means in active charge but growing toward eventual 
control, two. Of managing editors, all slipping about and, 
as the newspaper men seemed to think, spying on each other, 
at one time as many as seven. He had so little faith in his 
fellow-man, and especially such of his fellow-men as were so 
unfortunate as to have to work for him, that he played off one 
against another as might have the council of the Secret Ten 
in Venice, or as did the devils who ruled in the Vatican in 
the Middle Ages. Every man's hand, as I came to know in 
the course of time, was turned against that of every other. 
Ail were thoroughly distrustful of each other and feared the 
incessant spying that was going on. Each, as I was told and 
as to a certain extent one could feel, was made to believe that 



470 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

he was the important one, or might be, presuming that he 
could prove that the others were failures or in error. Pro- 
posed editorials, suggestions for news features, directions as 
to policy and what not, were coming in from him every hour 
via cable or telegraph. Nearly every issue of any importance 
was being submitted to him by the same means. He was, 
as described by this same Alleyne Ireland, undoubtedly semi- 
nenrasthenic, a disease-demonized soul, who could scarcely 
control himself in anything, a man who was fighting an almost 
insane battle with life itself, trying to be omnipotent and what 
not else, and never to die. 

But in regard to the men working here how sharp a sword 
of disaster seemed suspended above them by a thread, the 
sword of dismissal or of bitter reprimand or contempt. They 
had a kind of nervous, resentful terror in their eyes as have 
animals when they are tortured. All were either scribbling 
busily or hurrying in or out. Every man was for himself. If 
you had asked a man a question, as I ventured to do while 
sitting here, not knowing anything of how things were done 
here, he looked at you as though you were a fool, or as though 
you were trying to take something away from him or cause 
him trouble of some kind. In the main they bustled by or 
went on with their work without troubling to pay the slight- 
est attention to you. I had never encountered anything like 
it before, and only twice afterwards in my life did I find 
anything which even partially approximated it, and both 
times in New York. After the peace and ease of Pittsburgh — 
God! But it was immense, just the same — terrific. 



/ J J 

\l y CHAPTER LXXII 

After I had waited an hour or so, a boy came up and said : 
"The city editor wants to see you." I hurried forward to 
the desk of that Poohbah, who merely handed me a small 
clipping from another paper giving an account of some extra- 
terrestrial manifestations that had been taking place in a 
graveyard near Elizabeth, and told me to "see what there is 
in that." Unsophisticated as I was as to the ways of the 
metropolis, and assuming, Western-fashion, that I might ask 
a question of my new chief, I ventured a feeble "Where is 
that?" For my pains I received as contemptuous a look as 
it is possible for one human being to give another. 

"Back of the directory! Back of the directory!" came 
the semi-savage reply, and not quite realizing what was 
meant by that I retired precipitately, trying to think it out. 

Almost mechanically I went to the directory, but fumbling 
through that part of it which relates to streets and their 
numbers I began to realize that Elizabeth was a town and not 
a street. At a desk near the directory I noticed a stout man 
of perhaps forty, rotund and agreeable, who seemed to be less 
fierce and self -centered than some of the others. He had evi- 
dently only recently entered, for he had kicked off a pair of 
overshoes and laid a greatcoat over a chair beside him and 
was scribbling. 

' ' Can you tell me how I can get to Elizabeth ? " I inquired 
of him. 

"Sure," he said, looking up and beginning to chuckle. "I 
haven't been in the city very long myself, but I know where 
that is. It's on the Jersey Central, about twelve miles out. 
You'll catch a local by going down to the Liberty Street ferry. 
I heard him tell you 'Back of the directory,' " he added 
genially. "You mustn't mind that — that's what they always 
tell you here, these smart alecks, ' ' and he chuckled, very much 

471 



472 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

like my friend McCord. "They're the most inconsiderate lot 
I ever went up against, but you have to get used to it. Out 
where I came from they'll give you a civil answer once in a 
while, but here it's 'Back of the directory,' " and he chuckled 
again. 

' ' And where do you come from ? " I asked. 

"Oh, Pittsburgh originally," he said, which same gave me 
a spiritual lift, "but I haven't been in the game for several 
years. I 've been doing press agent work for a road show, one 
of my own, ' ' and he chuckled again. " I 'm not a stranger to 
New York exactly, but I am to this paper and this game 
down here." 

I wanted to stay longer and talk to him, but I had to hurry 
on this my first assignment in New York. "Is this your 
desk?" I asked. 

"No; they haven't deigned to give me one yet," and he 
chuckled again. "But I suppose I will get one eventually — 
if they don 't throw me out. ' ' 

"I hope I'll see you when I get back." 

' ' Oh, I '11 be around here, if I 'm not out in the snow. It 's 
tough, isn't it?" and he turned to his work again. I bustled 
out through that same anteroom where I had been restrained, 
and observed to my pestiferous opponents: "Now just take 
notice, Eddie. I belong here, see? I work here. And I'll be 
back in a little while. ' ' 

"Oh, dat's all right," he replied with a grin. "We gotta 
do dat. We gotta keep mosta dese hams outa here, dough. 
Dat's de orders we got." 

"Hams?" I thought. "They let these little snips speak 
of strangers as hams ! That 's New York for you ! ' ' 

I made the short dreary commuters' trip to Elizabeth. 
When I found my graveyard and the caretaker thereof, he 
said there was no truth in the story. No man by the name 
of the dead man mentioned had ever been buried there. No 
noises or appearances of any kind had been recorded. 
"They're always publishing things like that about New Jer- 
sey," he said. "I ,wish they'd quit it. Some newspaper 
fellow just wanted to earn a little money, that's all." 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 473 

I tramped back, caught a train and reached the office at 
eight. Already most of the assignments had been given out. 
The office was comparatively empty. The city editor had 
gone to dinner. At a desk along a wall was a long, lean, 
dyspeptic-looking man, his eyes shaded by a green shield, 
whom I took to be the night editor, so large was the pile of 
"copy" beside him, but when I ventured to approach him he 
merely glared sourly. "The city desk's not closed yet," he 
growled. "Wait '11 they come back." 

I retired, rebuffed again. 

Presently one of the assistants reappeared and I reported 
to him. "Nothing to it, eh?" he observed. "But there ought 
to be some kind of a josh to it." I did not get him. He told 
me to wait around, and I sought out an empty desk and sat 
down. The thing that was interesting me was how much I 
should be paid per week. In the meanwhile I contented 
myself with counting the desks and wondering about the men 
who occupied them, who they were, and what they were doing. 
To my right, against the north wall, were two roll-top desks, 
at one of which was seated a dapper actor-like man writing 
and posting. He was arrayed in a close-fitting gray suit, with 
a bright vest and an exceedingly high collar. Because of 
some theatrical programs which I saw him examining, I con- 
cluded that he must be connected with the dramatic depart- 
ment, probably the dramatic critic. I was interested and a 
little envious. The dramatic department of a great daily in 
New York seemed a wonderful thing to me. 

After a time also there entered another man who opened 
the desk next the dramatic critic. He was medium tall and 
stocky, with a mass of loose wavy hair hanging impressively 
over his collar, not unlike the advance agent of a cure-all or 
a quack Messiah. His body was encased in a huge cape-coat 
which reached to his knees after the best manner of a tra- 
gedian. He wore a large, soft-brimmed felt, which he now 
doffed rather grandiosely, and stood a big cane in the corner. 
He had the look and attitude of a famous musician, the stage- 
type, and evidently took himself very seriously. I put him 



474 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

down as the musical critic at least, some great authority of 
whom I should hear later. 

Time went by, and I waited. Through the windows from 
where I was sitting I could see the tops of one or two build- 
ings, one holding a clock-face lighted with a green light. 
Being weary of sitting, I ventured to leave my seat and look 
out to the south. Then for the first time I saw that great night 
panorama of the East River and the bay with its ships and 
docks, and the dark mass of buildings in between, many of 
them still lighted. It was a great scene, and a sense of awe 
came over me. New York was so vast, so varied, so rich, so 
hard. How was one to make one 's way here ? I had so little 
to offer, merely a gift of scribbling; and money, as I could 
see, was not to be made in that way. 

The city editor returned and told me to attend a meeting 
of some committee which looked to the better lighting and 
cleaning of a certain district. It was all but too late, as I 
knew, and if reported would be given no more than an inch 
of space. I took it rather dejectedly. Then fell the worst 
blow of all. "Wait a minute," he said, as I moved to depart. 
"I wanted to tell you. I can't make you a reporter yet — there 
is no vacancy on our regular staff. But I '11 put you on space, 
and you can charge up whatever you get in at seven-and-a- 
half a column. We allow fifty cents an hour for time. Show 
up tomorrow at eleven, and I'll see if anything turns up." 

My heart sank to my shoes. No reportorial staff with which 
I had ever been connected had been paid by space. I went to 
the meeting and found that it was of no importance, and 
made but one inch, as I discovered next morning by a careful 
examination of the paper. And a column of the paper meas- 
ured exactly twenty-one inches ! So my efforts this day, allow- 
ing for time charged for my first trip, had resulted in a total 
of one dollar and eighty-six cents, or a little less than street- 
sweepers and snow-shovelers were receiving. 

But this was not all. Returning about eleven with this item, 
I ventured to say to the night editor now in charge : ' ' When 
does a man leave here ? ' ' 

"You're a new space man, aren't you?" 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 475 

"Yes, sir." 

"You have the late watch tonight." 

"And how late is that?" 

"Until after the first edition is on the press," he growled. 

Not knowing when that was I still did not venture to ques- 
tion him but returned to another reporter working near at 
hand, who told me I should have to stay until three. At that 
time my green-shaded mentor called, "You might as well 
go now," and I made my way to the Sixth Avenue L and 
so home, having been here since one o'clock of the preceding 
day. The cheerful face of my sister sleepily admitting me was 
quite the best thing that this brisk day in the great city had 
provided. 



CHAPTER LXXIII 

The next morning, coming down at eleven I encountered my 
friend of the day before, whom I found looking through the 
paper and checking up such results as he had been able to 
achieve. ' ' Tst ! Tst ! " he clicked to himself as he went over 
the pages, looking high and low for a minute squib which he 
had managed to get in. Looking around and seeing me near 
at hand, he said: "Positively, this is the worst paper in New 
York. I've always heard it was, and now I know it. This 
damned crowd plays favorites. They have an inside ring, a 
few pets, who get all the cream, and fellows like you and me 
get the short ends. Take me yesterday : I was sent out on four 
lousy little stories, and not one amounted to anything. I 
tramped and rode all over town in the snow, listened to a lot 
of fools spout, and this morning I have just three little items. 
Look at that — and that — and that ! ' ' and he pointed to check- 
marks on different pages. They made a total of, say, seven or 
eight inches, the equivalent in cash of less than three dollars. 
' ' And I 'm supposed to live on that, ' ' he went on, ' ' and I have 
a boy and a girl in school ! How do they figure that a man is 
to get along?" 

I had no consolation to offer him. After a time he re- 
sumed: "What they do is to get strangers like us, or 
any of these down-and-out newspaper men always walking up 
and down Park Row looking for a job, and get us to work on 
space because it sounds bigger to a greenhorn. Sure they have 
space-men here who amount to something, fellows who get big 
money, but they're not like us. They make as much as 
seventy-five and a hundred dollars a week. But they're re- 
write men, old reporters who have too big a pull and who are 
too sure of themselves to stand for the low salaries they pay 
here. But they're at the top. We little fellows are told that 
stuff about space, but all we get is leg-work. If you or I 

476 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 477 

should get hold of a good story don't you ever think they'd 
let us write it. I know that much. They 'd take it away and 
give it to one of these rewrite fellows. There's one now," 
and he pointed to a large comfortable man in a light brown 
overcoat and Thrown hat who was but now ambling in. ' ' He 
rewrote one of my stories just the other day. If they wanted 
you for regular work they'd make you take a regular salary 
for fear you'd get too much of space. They just keep us 
little fellows as extras to follow up such things as they 
wouldn't waste a good man on. And they're always firing a 
crowd of men every three or four months to keep up the zip of 
the staff, to keep 'em worried and working hard. I hate the 
damned business. I told myself in Pittsburgh that I never 
would get back in it again, but here I am ! ' ' 

This revelation made me a little sick. So this was my grand 
job ! A long period of drudgery for little or nothing, my 
hard-earned money exhausted — and then what? 

''Just now," he went on, "there's nothing doing around 
the town or I wouldn't be here. I'm only staying on until I 
can get something better. It's a dog's life. There's nothing 
in it. I worked here all last week, and what do you think I 
made? Twelve dollars and seventy -five cents for the whole 
week, time included. Twelve dollars and seventy-five cents! 
It's an outrage!" 

I agreed with him. ' ' What is this time they allow ? " I 
asked. "How do they figure — expenses and all?" 

"Sure, they allow expenses, and I'm going to figure mine 
more liberally from now on. It's a little bonus they allow 
you for the time you work, but you don't get anything any- 
how. I'll double any railroad fare I pay. If they don't like 
it they can get somebody else. But they won 't let you do too 
much of it, and if you can 't make a little salary on small stuff 
they won't keep you even then." He grinned. "Anything 
big goes to the boys on a salary, and if it 's real big the space- 
men, who are on salary and space also, get the cream. I went 
out on a story the other afternoon and tramped around in the 
rain and got all the facts, and just as I was going to sit down 
and write it — well, I hadn't really got started — one of the 



478 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

managing editors — there are about twenty around here — 
came up and took it away from me and gave it to somebody else 
to write. All I got was ' time. ' Gee, I was sore ! But I don 't 
care," he added with a chuckle. "I'll be getting out of here 
one of these days." 

Being handed this dose of inspiring information, I was in 
no mood for what followed ; although I decided that this series 
of ills that were now befalling him was due to the fact that he 
was older than myself and maybe not very efficient, whereas 
in my ease, being young, efficient, etc., etc. — the usual mental 
bonus youth hands itself — I should do better. But when it 
came to my assignments this day and the next and the next, 
and in addition I was ' ' handed ' ' the late watch, my cock sure- 
ness began to evaporate. Each day I was given unimpor- 
tant rumors or verification tales, which came to nothing. So 
keen was the competition between the papers, especially be- 
tween the World and the Sun, or the World and the Herald, 
that almost everything suggested by one was looked into and 
criticized by the others. The items assigned to me this second 
day were : to visit the city morgue and there look up the body 
of a young and beautiful girl who was supposed to have 
drowned herself or been drowned and see if this was true, as 
another paper had said (and of course she was not beautiful 
at all) ; to visit a certain hotel to find out what I could about 
a hotel beat who had been arrested (this item, although writ- 
ten, was never used) ; to visit a Unitarian conference called 
to debate some supposed changes in faith or method of church 
development, the date for which however had been changed 
without notice to the papers, for which I was allowed time and 
carfare. My time, setting aside the long and wearisome hours 
in which I sat in the office awaiting my turn for an assignment, 
netted me the handsome sum of two dollars and fifty cents. 
And all the time in this very paper, I could read the noblest 
and most elevating discourses about duty, character, the need 
of a higher sense of citizenship, and what not. I used to 
frown at the shabby pecksniffery of it, the cheap buncombe 
that would allow a great publisher to bleed and drive his 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 479 

employees at one end of his house and deliver exordiums as 
to virtue, duty, industry, thrift, honesty at the other. 

However, despite these little setbacks and insights, I was not 
to be discouraged. The fact that I had succeeded elsewhere 
made me feel that somehow I should succeed here. Neverthe- 
less, in spite of this sense of efficiency, I was strangely over- 
awed and made more than ordinarily incompetent by the huge- 
ness and force and heartlessness of the great city, its startling 
contrasts of wealth and poverty, the air of ruthlessness and 
indifference and disillusion that everywhere prevailed. Only 
recently there had been a disgusting exposure of the putres- 
cence and heartlessness and brutality which underlay the social 
structure of the city. There had been the Lexow Investiga- 
tion with its sickening revelations of graft and corruption, 
and the protection and encouragement of vice and crime in 
every walk of political and police life. The most horrible 
types of brothels had been proved to be not only winked at 
but preyed upon by the police and the politicians by a fixed 
and graded monthly tax in which the patrolman, the ' ' rounds- 
man," the captain and the inspector, to say nothing of the 
district leader, shared. There was undeniable proof that the 
police and the politicians, even the officials, of the city were 
closely connected with all sorts of gambling and wire-tapping 
and bunco-steering, and even the subornation of murder. To 
the door of every house of prostitution and transient rooming- 
house the station police captain's man, the roundsman, came 
as regularly as the rent or the gas man, and took more away. 
''Squealers" had been murdered in cold blood for their 
squealing. A famous chief of police, Byrnes by name, reputed 
at that time, far and wide, for his supposed skill in unraveling 
mysteries, being faced by a saturnalia of crime which he could 
not solve, had finally in self-defense caused to be arrested, 
tried, convicted and electrocuted, all upon suborned testi- 
mony, an old, helpless, half-witted bum known as Old Shake- 
speare, whose only crime was that he was worthless and 
defenseless. But the chief had thereby saved his "reputa- 
tion." Not far from the region in which my sister lived, 
although it was respectable enough in its way, tramped count- 



480 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

less girls by night and by day looking for men, the great 
business of New York, and all preyed upon by the police. On 
several occasions, coming home from work after midnight, I 
found men lying hatless, coatless, trousers pockets pulled out, 
possibly their skulls fractured, so inadequate or indifferent 
or conniving was the so-called police protection. 

Nowhere before had I seen such a lavish show of wealth, 
or, such bitter poverty. In my reporting rounds I soon came 
upon the East Side; the Bowery, with its endless line of 
degraded and impossible lodging-houses, a perfect whorl of 
bums and failures ; the Brooklyn waterfront, parts of it terri- 
ble in its degradation ; and then by way of contrast again the 
great hotels, the mansions along Fifth Avenue, the smart 
shops and clubs and churches. "When I went into Wall Street, 
the Tenderloin, the Fifth Avenue district, the East and West 
sides, I seemed everywhere to sense either a terrifying desire 
for lust or pleasure or wealth, accompanied by a heartlessness 
which was freezing to the soul, or a dogged resignation to 
deprivation and misery. Never had I seen so many down-and- 
out men — in the parks, along the Bowery and in the lodging- 
houses which lined that pathetic street. They slept over 
gratings anywhere from which came a little warm air, or in 
doorways or cellar-ways. At a half dozen points in different 
parts of the city I came upon those strange charities which 
supply a free meal to a man or lodging for the night, pro- 
viding that he came at a given hour and waited long 
enough. 

And never anywhere had I seen so much show and luxury. 
Nearly all of the houses along upper Fifth Avenue and its 
side streets boasted their liveried footmen. Wall Street was a 
sea of financial trickery and legerdemain, a realm so crowded 
with sharklike geniuses of finance that one's poor little 
arithmetic intelligence was entirely discounted and made 
ridiculous. How was a sniveling scribbler to make his way 
in such a world? Nothing but chance and luck, as I saw 
it, could further the average man or lift him out of his rut, 
and since when had it been proved that I was a favorite of 
fortune? A crushing sense of incompetence and general in- 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 481 

efficiency seemed to settle upon me, and I could not shake 
it off. Whenever I went out on an assignment — and I was 
always being sent upon those trivial, shoe-wearing affairs — I 
carried with me this sense of my unimportance. 



CHAPTER LXXIV 

It is entirely possible that, due to some physical or mental 
defect of my own, I was in no way fitted to contemplate so 
huge and ruthless a spectacle as New York then presented, 
or that I had too keen a conception of it at any rate. After 
a few days of work here I came in touch with several news- 
paper men from the West — a youth by the name of Graves, 
another by the name of Elliott, both formerly of Chicago, 
and a third individual who had once been in St. Louis, "Wynne 
Thomas, brother of the famous playwright, Augustus. All 
were working on this paper, two of them in the same capacity 
as myself, the third a staff man. At night we used to sit 
about doing the late watch and spin all sorts of newspaper 
tales. These men had wandered from one place to another, 
and had seen — heavens, what had they not seen! They were 
completely disillusioned. Here, as in newspaper offices every- 
where, one could hear the most disconcerting tales of human 
depravity and cruelty. I think that in the hours I spent with 
these men I learned as much about New York and its diffi- 
culties and opportunities, its different social strata, its out- 
standing figures social and political, as I might have learned 
in months of reporting and reading. They seemed to know 
every one likely to figure in the public eye. By degrees they 
introduced me to others, and all confirmed the conclusions 
which I was reaching. New York was difficult and revolting. 
The police and politicians were a menace ; vice was rampant 5 
wealth was shamelessly showy, cold and brutal. In New York 
the outsider or beginner had scarcely any chance at all, save 
as a servant. The city was overrun with hungry, loafing 
men of all descriptions, newspaper writers included. 

After a few weeks of experimenting, however, I had no need 
of confirmation from any source. An assignment or two 
having developed well under my handling, and I having re- 

482 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 483 

ported my success to the city editor, I was allowed to begin 
to write it, then given another assignment and told to turn 
my story over to the large gentleman with the gold-headed 
cane. This infuriated and discouraged me, but I said noth- 
ing. I thought it might be due to the city editor's convic- 
tion, so far not disturbed by any opportunity I had had, that 
I could not write. 

But one night, a small item about a fight in a tenement 
house having been given me to investigate, I went to the 
place in question and found that it was a cheap beer-drinking 
brawl on the upper East Side which had its origin in the 
objection of one neighbor to the noise made by another. I 
constructed a ridiculous story of my own to the effect that 
the first irritated neighbor was a musician who had been at- 
tempting at midnight to construct a waltz, into which the 
snores, gurgles, moans and gasps of his slumberous next-door 
neighbor would not fit. Becoming irritated and unable by 
calls and knocking to arouse his friend and so bring him to 
silence, he finally resorted to piano banging and glass-breaking 
of such a terrible character as to arouse the entire neighbor- 
hood and cause the sending in of a riot call by a policeman, 
who thought that a tenement war had broken out. Result: 
broken heads and an interesting parade to the nearest police 
station. Somewhere in the text I used the phrase "sawing 
somnolent wood." 

Finding no one in charge of the city editor's desk when I 
returned, I handed my account to the night city editor. 
The next morning, lo and behold, there it was on the first 
page consuming at least a fourth of a column ! To my further 
surprise and gratification, once the city editor appeared I 
noticed a change of attitude in him. While waiting for an 
assignment, I caught his eye on me, and finally he came over, 
paper in hand, and pointing to the item said: "You wrote 
this, didn't you?" I began to think that I might have made 
a mistake in creating this bit of news and that it had been 
investigated and found to be a fiction. "Yes," I replied. 
Instead of berating me he smiled and said : "Well, it's rather 
well done. I may be able to make a place for you after a 



484 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

while. I'll see if I can't find an interesting story for you 
somewhere. ' ' 

And true to his word, he gave me another story on this 
order. In the Hoffman House bar, one of the show-places 
of the city, there had been a brawl the day before, a fight 
between a well-known society youth of great wealth who owed 
the hotel money and would not pay as speedily as it wished, 
and a manager or assistant manager who had sent him some 
form of disturbing letter. All the details, as I discovered 
on reading the item (which had been clipped from the 
Herald), had been fully covered by that paper, and all that 
remained for me twenty-four hours later was to visit the 
principals and extract some comments or additions to the 
tale, which plainly I was expected to revamp in a humorous 
fashion. 

As I have said, humor had never been wholly in my line, 
and in addition I had by no means overcome my awe of the 
city and its imposing and much-advertised "Four Hundred." 
Now to be called upon to invade one of its main hostelries 
and beard the irate and lofty manager in his den, to say 

nothing of this young Vanderbilt or Goelet — well I told 

myself that when I reached this hotel the manager would 
doubtless take a very lofty tone and refuse to discuss the 
matter — which was exactly what happened. He was infuri- 
ated to think that he had been reported as fighting. Similarly, 
should I succeed in finding this society youth's apartment, 
I should probably be snubbed or shunted off in some cavalier 
fashion — which was exactly what happened. I was told that 
my Mr. X. was not there. Then, as a conscientious newspaper 
man, I knew I should return to the hotel and by cajolery or 
bribery see if I could not induce some barkeeper or waiter 
who had witnessed the fight to describe some phase of it that 
I might use. 

But I was in no mood for this, and besides, I was afraid 
of these New York waiters and managers and society people. 
Suppose they complained of my tale and denounced me as a 
faker? I returned to the hotel, but its onyx lobby and bar 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 485 

and its heavy rococo decorations and furniture took my cour- 
age away. I lingered about but could not begin my inquiries, 
and finally walked out. Then I went back to the apartment 
house in which my youth lived, but still he was not in and 
I could extract no news from the noble footman who kept 
the door. I did not see how I was to conjure up humor 
from the facts in hand. Finally I dropped it as unworthy 
of me and returned to the office. In doing so I had the feeling 
that I was turning aside an item by which, had I chosen to 
fake, I could have furthered myself. I knew now that what 
my city editor wanted was not merely "accuracy, accuracy, 
accuracy," but a kind of flair for the ridiculous or the re- 
markable even though it had to be invented, so that the pages 
of the paper, and life itself, might not seem so dull. Also 
I realized that a more experienced man, one used to the 
ways of the city and acquainted with its interesting and ec- 
centric personalities, might make something out of this and 
not come to grief; but not I. And so I let it go, realizing 
that I was losing an excellent opportunity. 

And I think that my city editor thought so too. "When I 
returned and told him that I could not find anything inter- 
estingly new in connection with this he looked at me as much 
as to say, "Well, I'll be damned!" and threw the clipping 
on his desk. I am satisfied that if any reporter had succeeded 
in uncovering any aspect of this case not previously used I 
should have been dropped forthwith. As it turned out, how- 
ever, nothing more developed, and for a little time anyhow I 
was permitted to drag on as before, but with no further 
favors. 

One day, being given a part of a "badger" case to unravel, 
a man and woman working together to divest a hotel man 
of a check for five thousand dollars, and I having cajoled the 
lady in the case (then under arrest) into making some inter- 
esting remarks as to her part in the affair and badgering in 
general, I was not allowed to write it but had to content my- 
self with seeing my very good yarn incorporated in another 
man 's story while I took ' ' time. ' ' Another day, having devel- 



486 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

oped another excellent tale of a runaway marriage, the girl 
being of a family of some standing, I was not allowed to 
write it. I was beginning to see that I was a hopeless failure 
as a reporter here. 



CHAPTER LXXV 

The things which most contributed to my want of news- 
paper success in New York and eventually drove me, though 
much against my will and understanding, into an easier and 
more agreeable phase of life were, first, that awe of the grind- 
ing and almost disgusting forces of life itself which I found 
in Spencer and Huxley and Balzac and which now persistently 
haunted me and, due possibly to a depressed physical condi- 
tion at this time, made it impossible for me to work with any 
of the zest that had characterized my work in the "West. Next, 
there was that astounding contrast between wealth and pover- 
ty, here more sharply emphasized than anywhere else in Amer- 
ica, which gave the great city a gross and cruel and mechan- 
ical look, and this was emphasized not only by the papers 
themselves, with their various summaries of investigations 
and exposures, but also by my own hourly contact with it— a 
look so harsh and indifferent at times as to leave me a little 
numb. Again, there was something disillusioning in the sharp 
contrast between the professed ideals and preachments of such 
a constantly moralizing journal as the World and the heart- 
less and savage aspect of its internal economy. Men such as 
myself were mere machines or privates in an ill-paid army to 
be thrown into any breach. There was no time off for the 
space-men, unless it was for all time. One was expected to 
achieve the results desired or get out; and if one did achieve 
them the reward was nothing. 

One day I met an acquaintance and asked about an ex-city 
editor from St. Louis who had come to New York, and his 
answer staggered me. 

"Oh, Cliff? Didn't you hear? Why, he committed suicide 
down here in a West Street hotel." 

"What was the trouble?" I asked. 

"Tired of the game, I guess," he replied. "He didn't 

487 



488 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

get along down here as well as lie had out there. I guess he 
felt that he was going downhill." 

I walked away, meditating. He had been an excellent news- 
paper man, as brisk and self-centered as one need be to pros- 
per. The last time I had seen him he was in good physical 
condition, and yet, after something like a year in New York, 
he had killed himself. 

However, my mood was not that of one who runs away 
from a grueling contest. I had no notion of leaving New 
York, whatever happened, although I constantly speculated 
as to what I should do when all my money was gone. I 
had no trade or profession beyond this reporting, and yet I 
was convinced that there must be something else that I could 
do. Come what might, I was determined that I would ask 
no favor of my brother, and as for my sister, who was now 
a burden on my hands, I was determined that as soon as this 
burden became too great I would take up her case with my 
brother Paul, outline all that had been done and ask him 
to shoulder the difference until such time as I could find my- 
self in whatever work I was destined to do. 

But what was it? 

One of the things which oppressed me was the fact that on 
the World, as well as on the other papers, were men as young 
as myself who were apparently of a very different texture, 
mentally if not physically. Life and this fierce contest which 
I was taking so much to heart seemed in no wise to disturb 
them. By reason of temperament and insight perhaps, pos- 
sibly the lack of it, or, what was more likely, certain fortunate 
circumstances attending their youth and upbringing, they 
were part of that oncoming host of professional optimists and 
yea-sayers, chorus-like in character, which for thirty years 
or more thereafter in American life was constantly engaged 
in the pleasing task of emphasizing the possibilities of suc- 
cess, progress, strength and what not for all, in America and 
elsewhere, while at the same time they were humbly and 
sycophantically genuflecting before the strong, the lucky, the 
prosperous. On the World alone at this time, to say nothing 
of the other papers, were at least a dozen, swaggering about 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 489 

in the best of clothes, their manners those of a graduate of 
Yale or Harvard or Princeton, their minds stuffed with all 
the noble maxims of the uplifters. There was nothing wrong 
with the world that could not be easily and quickly righted, 
once the honest, just, true, kind, industrious turned their 
giant and selected brains to the task. This newest type of 
young newspaper man was to have no traffic with evil in 
any form ; he was to concern himself with the Good, the True, 
the Beautiful. Many of these young men pretended to an 
intimate working knowledge of many things : society, politics, 
finance and what not else. Several had evidently made them- 
selves indispensable as ship reporters, interviewers of arriving 
and departing celebrities, and these were now pointed out to 
me as men worthy of envy and emulation. One of them 
had, at the behest of the World, crossed the ocean more than 
once seeking to expose the principals in a growing ship- 
gambling and bunco scandal. There were those who were in 
the confidence of the mayor, the governor, and some of the 
lights in Wall Street. One, a scion of one of the best families, 
was the paper's best adviser as to social events and scandals. 
The grand air with which they swung in and out of the office 
set me beside myself with envy. 

And all the time the condition of my personal affairs tended 
to make me anything but optimistic. I was in very serious 
financial straits. I sometimes think that I was too new to the 
city, too green to its psychology and subtlety, to be of any 
use to a great metropolitan daily; and yet, seeing all I had 
seen, I should have been worth something. I was only five 
years distant from the composition of Sister Carrie, to say 
nothing of many short stories and magazine articles. Yet I 
was haunted by the thought that I was a misfit, that I might 
really have to give up and return to the "West, where in some 
pathetic humdrum task I should live out a barren and point- 
less life. 

With this probable end staring me in the face, I began to 
think that I must not give up but must instead turn to letters, 
the art of short-story writing ; only just how to do this I could 
not see. One of the things that prompted me to try this was 



490 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the fact that on the World at this time were several who had 
succeeded — David Graham Phillips, James Creelman, then a 
correspondent for the paper in the war which had broken 
out between China and Japan, to say nothing of George Gary 
Eggleston and Reginald de Koven, the latter on the staff as 
chief musical critic. There was another young man, whose 
name I have forgotten, who was pointed out to me as a 
rapidly growing favorite in the office of the Century. Then 
there were those new arrivals in the world of letters : Kipling, 
Richard Harding Davis, Stephen Crane and some others, 
whose success fascinated me. 

All this was but an irritant to a bubbling chemistry which 
as yet had found no solution, and was not likely to find one 
for some time to come. My reading of Spencer and Huxley 
in no wise tended to clarify and impel my mind in the direc- 
tion of fiction, or even philosophy. But now, in a kind of 
ferment or fever due to my necessities and desperation, I set 
to examining the current magazines and the fiction and articles 
to be found therein: Century, Scribner's, Harper's. I was 
never more confounded than by the discrepancy existing be- 
tween my own observations and those displayed here, the 
beauty and peace and charm to be found in everything, the 
almost complete absence of any reference to the coarse and 
the vulgar and the cruel and the terrible. How did it happen 
that these remarkable persons — geniuses of course, one and 
all — saw life in this happy roseate way? Was it so, and was 
I all wrong? Love was almost invariably rewarded in these 
tales. Almost invariably one 's dreams came true, in the maga- 
zines. Most of these bits of fiction, delicately phrased, flowed 
so easily, with such an air of assurance, omniscience and 
condescension, that I was quite put out by my own lacks and 
defects. They seemed to deal with phases of sweetness and 
beauty and success and goodness such as I rarely encountered. 
There were so many tales of the old South reeking with a 
poetry which was poetry and little more (George W. Cable; 
Thomas Nelson Page). In Harper's I found such assured 
writers as "William Dean Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, 
Frank R. Stockton, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and a score of 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF . 491 

others, all of whom wrote of nobility of character and sacri- 
fice and the greatness of ideals and joy in simple things. 

But as I viewed the strenuous world about me, all that I 
read seemed not to have so very much to do with it. Per- 
haps, as I now thought, life as I saw it, the darker phases, 
was never to be written about. Maybe such things were not 
the true province of fiction anyhow. I read and read, but all 
I could gather was that I had no such tales to tell, and, how- 
ever much I tried, I could not think of any. The kind of 
thing I was witnessing no one would want as fiction. These 
writers seemed far above the world of which I was a part. 
Indeed I began to picture them as creatures of the greatest 
luxury and culture, gentlemen and ladies all, comfortably 
housed, masters of servants, possessing estates, or at least 
bachelor quarters, having horses and carriages, and received 
here, there and everywhere with nods of recognition and 
smiles of approval. 



CHAPTER LXXVI 

And then after a little while, being assigned to do routine 
work in connection with the East Twenty-seventh Street police 
station, Bellevue Hospital, and the New York Charities De- 
partment, which included branches that looked after the 
poor-farm, the morgue, an insane asylum or two, a workhouse 
and what not else, I was called upon daily to face as dis- 
agreeable and depressing a series of scenes as it is possible 
for a human being to witness and which quite finished me. 
I was compelled to inquire of fat, red-faced sergeants, and 
door-keepers who reigned in police stations and hospital regis- 
try rooms what was new, and, by being as genial and agreeable 
as possible and so earning their favor, to get an occasional tip 
as to the most unimportant of brawls. Had I been in a dif- 
ferent mental state the thickness and incommunicability of 
some of these individuals would not have been proof against 
my arts. I could have devised or manufactured something. 

But as it was the nature of this world depressed me so that 
I could not have written anything very much worth while if 
I had wanted to. There was the morgue, for instance — 
that horrible place ! Daily from the ever-flowing waters about 
New York there were recaptured or washed up in all stages 
and degrees of decomposition the flotsam and jetsam of the 
great city, its offal, its victims — its what? I came here often 
(it stood at the foot of East Twenty-sixth Street near 
Bellevue Hospital) and invariably I found the same old 
brown-denimed caretaker in charge, a creature so thick and so 
lethargic and so mentally incompetent generally that it was 
all I could do to extract a grunt of recognition out of him. 
Yet, if handed a cigar occasionally or a bag of tobacco, he 
would trouble to get out of his chair and let you look over a 
book or ledger containing the roughly jotted down police de- 
scriptions, all done in an amazing scrawl, of the height, 

492 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 493 

weight, color of clothes if any, complexion of hair and eyes 
where these were still distinguishable, probable length of time 
in water, contents of pockets, jewelry or money if any, etc., 
which same were to be noted in connection with any mystery 
or disappearance of a person. And there was always some 
one "turning up missing." And I noticed, with considerable 
cynicism, that rarely if ever was there any money or jewelry 
reported as found by the police. That would be too much 
to expect. 

Being further persuaded via blandishments or tips of one 
kind and another, this caretaker would lead the way to a shelf 
of drawers reaching from the floor to the chest-height of a 
man or higher and running about two sides of the room, and 
opening those containing the latest arrivals, supposing you 
were interested to look, would allow you to gaze upon the 
last of that strange chemical formula which once functioned 
as a human being here on earth. The faces ! The decay ! 
The clothing! I stared in sad horror and promised myself 
that I would never again look, but duty to the paper compelled 
me so to do again and again. 

And then there was Bellevue itself, that gray-black collec- 
tion of brick and stone with connecting bridges of iron, which 
faced, in winter time at least, the gray, icy waters of the 
East River. I have never been able to forget it, so drear and 
bleak was it all. The hobbling ghouls of caretakers in their 
baggy brown cotton suits to be seen wandering here and there 
or hovering over stoves; the large number of half -well charity 
patients idling about in gray-green denim, their faces 
sunken and pinched, their hair poorly combed! And the 
chipper and yet often coarse and vulgar and always overbear- 
ing young doctors and nurses and paid attendants generally ! 
One need but remember that it was the heyday of the most 
corrupt period of Tammany Hall's shameless political control 
of New York, Mr. Croker being still in charge. Quite all 
of those old buildings have since been replaced and surrounded 
by a tall iron fence and bordered with an attractive lawn. 
In those days it was a little different : there was the hospital 
proper, with its various wards, its detention hospital for 



494 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

the criminal or insane, or both, the morgue and a world of 
smaller pavilions stretching along the riverfront and con- 
nected by walks or covered hallways or iron "bridges, but lack- 
ing the dignity and care of the later structures. There 
was, too, the dark psychology which attends any badly 
or foully managed institution, that something which hovers 
as a cloud over all. And Bellevue at that time had that air 
and that psychology. It smacked more of a jail and a poor- 
house combined than of a hospital, and so it "was, I think. 
At that time it was a seething world of medical and political 
and social graft, a kind of human hell or sty. Those poor 
•fish who live in comfortable and protected homes and find 
their little theories and religious beliefs ready-made for them" 
in some overawing church or social atmosphere, should be 
permitted to take an occasional peep into a world such as this 
was then. At this very time there was an investigation and 
an exposure on in connection with this institution, which had 
revealed not only the murder *of helpless patients but the 
usual graft in connection with food, drugs, clothing, etc., 
furnished to the patients called charity. Grafting officials and 
medics and brutes of nurses and attendants abounded, of 
course. The number of "drunks" and obstreperous or com- 
plaining or troublesome patients doped or beaten or thrown 
out and even killed, and the number and quality of operations 
conducted by incompetent or indifferent surgeons, was known 
and shown to be large. One need only return to the legisla- 
tive investigations of that date to come upon the truth of 
this. 

But the place was so huge and crowded that it was like 
a city in itself. For one thing, it was a dumping-ground for 
all the offal gathered by the police and the charity depart- 
ments, to say nothing of being a realm of "soft snaps" for 
political pensioners of all kinds. On such days as relatives 
and friends of charity patients or those detained by the police 
were permitted to call, the permit room fairly swarmed with 
people who were pushed and shunted here and there like 
cattle, and always browbeaten like slaves. I myself, visiting 
as a stranger subsequently, was often so treated. "Who? 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 495 

What's his name? What? Whendee come? When? Talk 
a little louder, can 't you ? Whatsy matter with your tongue ? 
Over there ! Over there ! Out that door there ! " So we 
came, procured our little cards, and passed in or out. 

And the wretched creatures who were "cured" or written 
down well enough to walk, and so, before a serious illness 
had been properly treated and because they were not able 
to pay, were shunted out into the world of the well and the 
strong with whom they were supposed to compete once more 
and make their way. I used to see them coming and going 
and have talked to scores, men and women who had never had 
a dollar above their meager needs and who, once illness over- 
took them, had been swept into this limbo, only to be turned 
out again at the end of a few weeks or months to make their 
way as best they might, and really worse off than when they 
came, for now they were in a weak condition physically as 
well as penniless, and sometimes, as I noticed, on the day of 
their going the weather was most inclement. And the old, 
wrinkled, washed-out clothing doled out to them in which 
they were to once more wander back to the tenements — to do 
what? There was a local charity organization at the time, 
as there is today, but if it acted in behalf of any of these I 
never saw it. They wandered away west on Twenty-sixth 
Street and along First and Second Avenue, those drear, dis- 
mal, underdog streets — to where ? 

But by far the most irritating of all the phases of this 
institution, to me at least, were the various officials and danc- 
ing young medics and nurses in their white uniforms, the 
latter too often engaged in flirting with one another or tennis- 
playing or reading in some warm room, their feet planted 
upon a desk the while they smoked and the while the great 
institution with all its company of miserables wagged its 
indifferent way. When not actually visiting their patients 
one could always find them so ensconced somewhere, reading 
or smoking or talking or flirting. In spite of the world of 
misery that was thrashing about them they were as comfort- 
able as may be, and to me, when bent upon unraveling the 
details of some particular ease, they always seemed heartless. 



496 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

"Oh, that old nut? What's interesting about him? Surely 
you don 't expect to dig up anything interesting about him, do 
you? He's been here three weeks now. No; we don't know 
anything about him. Don't the records show?" Or, suppos- 
ing he had died : "I knew he couldn 't live. We couldn 't give 
him the necessary attention here. He didn't have any money, 
and there's too many here as it is. Wanta see an interesting 
case?" And then one might be led in to some wretch who 
was out of his mind or had an illusion of some kind. ' ' Funny 
old duck, eh ? But there 's no hope. He '11 be dead in a week 
or so." 

I think the most sickening thing I ever saw was cash gam- 
bling among two young medics and a young nurse in charge 
of the receiving ward as to whether the next patient to be 
brought in by the ambulance, which had been sent out on a 
hurry accident call, would arrive alive or dead. 

"Fifty that he's dead!" 

"Fifty that he isn't!" 

"I say alive!" 

"I say dead!" 

"Well, hand me that stethoscope. I'm not going to be 
fooled by looks this time ! ' ' 

Tearing in came the ambulance, its bell clanging, the hubs 
of the wheels barely missing the walls of the entryway, and 
as the stretcher was pulled out and set down on the stone 
step under the archway the three pushed about and hung over, 
feeling the heart and looking at the eyes and lips, now pale 
blue as in death, quite as one might crowd about a curious 
specimen of plant or animal. 

"He's alive!" 

"He's dead!" 

"I say he's alive! Look at his eyes!" to illustrate which 
one eye was forced open. 

"Aw, what's eatin' you! Listen to his heart! Haven't I 
got the stetho on it ? Listen for yourself ! ' ' 

The man was dead, but the jangle lasted a laughing minute 
or more, the while he lay there ; then he was removed to the 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 497 

morgue and the loser compelled to "come across" or "fork 
over." 

One of the internes who occasionally went out "on the 
wagon," as the ambulance was called, told me that once, hav- 
ing picked up a J)adly injured man who had been knocked 
down by a car, this same ambulance on racing with this man 
to the hospital had knocked down another and all but killed 
him. 

"And what did you do about him?" I asked. 

"Stopped the boat and chucked him into it, of course." 

"On top of the other one?" 

"Side by side, sure. It was a little close, though." 

"Well, did he die?" 

"Yep. But the other one was all right. We couldn't help 
it, though. It was a life or death case for the first one." 

"A fine deal for the merry bystander," was all I could 
say. 

The very worst of all in connection with this great hospital, 
and I do not care to dwell on it at too great length since 
it has all been exposed before and the records are available, 
was this : about the hospital, in the capacity of orderlies, door- 
men, gatemen, errand boys, gardeners, and what not, were a 
number of down-and-out ex-patients or pensioners of politi- 
cians so old and feeble and generally decrepit mentally and 
physically as to be fit for little more than the scrap-heap. 
Their main desire, in so far as I could see, was to sit in the 
sun or safely within the warmth of a room and do nothing 
at all. If you asked them a question their first impulse and 
greatest delight was to say "Don't know" or refer you to 
some one else. They were accused by the half-dozen reporters 
who daily foregathered here to be of the lowest, so low indeed 
that they could be persuaded to do anything for a little 
money. And in pursuance of this theory there was one day 
propounded by a little red-headed Irish police reporter who 
used to hang about there that he would bet anybody five 
dollars that for the sum of fifteen dollars he could hire old 
Gansmuder, who was one of the shabbiest and vilest-looking 
of the hospital orderlies, to kill a man. According to him, 



498 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

and he had his information from one of the policemen sta- 
tioned in the hospital, Gansmuder was an ex-convict who had 
done ten years' time for a similar crime. Now old and penni- 
less, he was here finishing up a shameful existence, the pen- 
sioner of some politician to whom he had rendered a service 
perhaps. 

At any rate here he was, and, as one of several who heard 
the boast in the news-room near the gate, I joined in the 
shout of derision that went up. "Rot!" "What stuff!" 
"Well, you're the limit, Mickey!" However, as events 
proved, it was not so much talk as fact. I was not present 
at the negotiations but from amazed accounts by other news- 
paper men I learned that Gansmuder, being approached by 
Finn and one other (Finn first, then the two of them to- 
gether), agreed for the sum of twenty-five dollars, a part 
of it to be paid in advance, to lie in wait at a certain street 
corner in Brooklyn for an individual of a given description 
and there to strike him in such a way as to dispose of him. 
Of course the negotiations went no further than this, but 
somehow, true or no, this one incident has always typified 
the spirit of that hospital, and indeed of all political New 
York, to me. It was a period of orgy and crime, and Bellevue 
and the charities department constituted the back door which 
gave onto the river, the asylums, the potter's field, and all 
else this side of complete chemic dissolution. 



CHAPTER LXXVII 

Whether due to a naturally weak and incompetent phy- 
sique or a mind which unduly tortures itself with the evidences 
of a none-too-smooth working of the creative impulse and its 
machinery, or whether I had merely had my fill of reportorial 
work as such and could endiire no more, or whatever else 
might have been the cause, I finally determined to get out 
of the newspaper profession entirely, come what might and 
cost what it might, although just what I was to do once I 
was out I could not guess. I had no trade or profession 
other than this, and the thought of editing or writing for 
anything save a newspaper was as far from me as engineering 
or painting. I did not think I could write anything beyond 
newspaper news items, and with this conclusion many will no 
doubt be glad to agree with me even unto this day. 

Yet out of this messy and heartless world in which I 
was now working I did occasionally extract a tale that was 
printable, only so low was my credit that I rarely won the 
privilege of writing it myself. Had I imagined that I could 
write I might easily have built up stories out of what I saw 
which would have shocked the souls of the magazine editors 
and writers, but they would never have been published. They 
would have been too low, gruesome, drab, horrible, and so 
beyond the view of any current magazine or its clientele. 

Life at that time, outside the dark picture of it presented 
by the daily papers, must, as I have shown, be all sweetness 
and gayety and humor. We must discuss only our better 
selves, and arrive at a happy ending ; or if perchance this 
realer world must be referred to it must be indicated in some 
cloudy manner which would give it more the charm of shadow 
than of fact, something used to enhance the values of the 
lighter and more perfect and beautiful things with which our 
lives must concern themselves. Marriage, if I read the cur- 

499 



500 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

rent magazines correctly, was a sweet and delicate affair, 
never marred by the slightest erratic conduct of any kind. 
Love was made in heaven and lasted forever. Ministers, 
doctors, lawyers and merchants, were all good men, rarely 
if ever guilty of the shams and subterfuges and trashy aspects 
of humanity. If a man did an evil thing it was due to his 
lower nature, which really had nothing to do with his higher 
— and it was a great concession for the intelligentsia of that 
day (maybe of this) to admit that he had two natures, one 
of which was not high. Most of us had only the higher one, 
our better nature. . . . When I think of the literary and 
social snobbery and bosh of that day, its utter futility and 
profound faith in its own goodness, as opposed to facts of its 
own visible life, I have to smile. 

But it never occurred to me that I could write, in the lit- 
erary sense, and as for editing, I never even thought of it. 
And yet that was the very next thing I did. I wandered about 
thinking what I was to do, deciding each day that if I had 
the courage of a rat I would no longer endure this time-con- 
suming game of reporting, for the pitiful sum which I was 
allowed to draw. What more could it do for me? I asked 
myself over and over. Make me more aware of the brutality, 
subtlety, force, charm, selfishness of life? It could not if I 
worked a hundred years. Essentially, as I even then saw, 
it was a boy's game, and I was slowly but surely passing out 
of the boy stage. Yet in desperation because I saw disap- 
pearing the amount which I had saved up in Pittsburgh, 
and I had not one other thing in sight, I visited other 
newspaper offices to see if I could not secure, temporarily at 
least, a better regular salary. But no. Whenever I could get 
in to see a city or managing editor, which was rare, no one 
seemed to want me. At the offices of the Herald, Times, 
Tribune, Sun, and elsewhere the same outer office system 
worked to keep me out, and I was by now too indifferent to 
the reportorial work and too discouraged really to wish to 
force myself in or to continue as a reporter at all. Indeed 
I went about this matter of inquiry more or less perfunctorily, 
not really believing in either myself or my work. If I had 



A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 501 

secured a well-paying position I presume that I should have 
continued. Fortunately or unfortunately, as one chooses to 
look at such things, I did not ; but it seemed far from fortunate 
then to me. 

Finally one Saturday afternoon, having brought in a story 
which related to a missing girl whose body was found at the 

morgue and being told to ' ' give the facts to and let him 

write it," I summoned up sufficient courage to say to the 
assistant who ordered me to do this : 

"I don't see why I should always have to do this. I'm 
not a beginner in this game. I wrote stories, and big ones, 
before ever I came to this paper." 

"Maybe you did," he replied rather sardonically, "but we 
have the feeling that you haven't proved to be of much use 
to us." 

After this there was nothing to say and but one thing to 
do. I could not say that I had had no opportunities; but 
just the same I was terribly hurt in my pride. Without know- 
ing what to do or where to go, I there and then decided that, 
come what might, this was the end of newspaper reporting 
for me. Never again, if I died in the fight, would I con- 
descend to be a reporter on any paper. I might starve, but 
if so — I would starve. Either I was going to get something 
different, something more profitable to my mind, or I was 
going to starve or get out of New York. 

I went to the assistant and turned over my data, then got 
my hat and went out. I felt that I should be dismissed even- 
tually anyhow for incompetence and insubordination, so dark 
was my mood in regard to all of it, and so out I went. One 
thing I did do; I visited the man who had first ordered the 
city editor to put me on and submitted to him various clippings 
of work done in Pittsburgh with the request that he advise 
me as to where I might turn for work. 

"Better try the Sun/' was his sane advice. "It's a great 
school, and you might do well over there. ' ' 

But although I tried I could not get on the Sun — not, at 
least, before I had managed to do something else. 



502 A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF 

Thus ended my newspaper experiences, which I never re- 
sumed save as a writer of Sunday specials, and then under 
entirely different conditions — but that was ten years later. 
In the meantime I was now perforce turning toward a world 
which had never seemed to contain any future for me, and I 
was doing it without really knowing it. But that is another 
story. It might be related under some such title as Literary 
Experiences. 

N. B. Four years later, having by then established myself 
sufficiently to pay the rent of an apartment, secure furniture 
and convince myself that I could make a living for two, I 
undertook that perilous adventure with the lady of my choice 
— and that, of course, after the first flare of love had thinned 
down to the pale flame of duty. Need anything more be 
said? The first law of convention had been obeyed, whereas 
the governing forces of temperament had been overridden — 
and with what results eventually you may well suspect. So 
much for romance. 



THE END 



